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HISTORIC INDIANA 



BEING CHAPTERS IN THE STORY OF THE 
HOOSIER STATE FROM THE ROMANTIC 
PERIOD OF FOREIGN EXPLORATION AND 
DOMINION THROUGH PIONEER DAYS, STIR- 
RING WAR TIMES, AND PERIODS OF PEACE- 
FUL PROGRESS, TO THE PRESENT TIME 



BY 

JULIA HENDERSON LEVERING 



ILL USTRA TED 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

^bc fjulcfterbocher press 

1909 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two CoD'ies Received 

FEB 19 1909 

CLASS O^ XXc No. 



Copyright, igoq 

BY 

JULIA HENDERSON LEVERING 



Ube ftnicfierbocfier prese, Dew lorft 



to the memory of 

My Father and Mother 

whose noble lives and characters 
were a part of the influence of 
the past recalled in this volume 



PREFACE 

THE history of Indiana is rich in minor incidents 
of real interest and of importance; but not in 
events exclusively its own. The State had its 
share of the romantic and chivalrous adventures per- 
taining to the dawn of Western history, its share in 
the encounter with a savage race, in the self-sacrifice of 
pioneer days, and the heroic patriotism of the war 
periods. Following this, it had its decades of social and 
material development, common to the Middle West, 
It is a goodly land, most advantageously located, and 
always ready for its part in the national responsibilities. 

The history of Indiana's past is the story of her 
fast vanishing frontier life and the gradual changes 
which come in meeting modem conditions. The 
differences in social life broaden so rapidly in this 
country, that later generations take a keen pleasure 
in pages that preserve the scenes and experiences of 
those earlier days. 

Unless it is often retold, the memory of heroic en- 
deavors grows dim. Through history and literature 
the past accomplishments of a people are perpetuated, 
and their example has a manifold influence. From 
the pages of story and verse, the virtues and deeds, 
the energy and leadership of the best citizens are 
recalled to the remembrance of another generation. 

The intention of this book is to include in a single 
volume an account of various phases of the develop- 



vi Preface 

ment of the Commonwealth, whose history must be 
learned from many sources, not always accessible. 
Many who have not time for research, and others 
who have no taste for reading history, may take an 
interest in the romance of foreign dominion on the 
Wabash, and in a plain tale of the early settlers. Some 
may have aroused within them a just pride in their 
State, in reading of Indiana's valiant part in war, 
the development of her vast natural resources, and the 
advanced position which she has taken among the 
states in provisions for universal education, and 
the enactment of beneficent laws. 

The author's lifelong familiarity with the scenes, 
the characters, the movements, and the events men- 
tioned, insures to the reader a sympathetic treatment 
of the subject. Fireside recitals by aged pioneers, 
addresses at old settlers' meetings, local historical 
society papers, reminiscences of early citizens, State 
records, scholarly monographs and histories have 
all gone to the making of these pages. 

An attempt has been made to accredit, either in 
the text or in the appended bibliography, the state- 
ments and facts, freely gleaned, from every known 
authority. Acknowledgment and thanks are grate- 
fully rendered to them, and to old settlers for their 
reminiscences. 

If a renewed interest in those authorities is enlisted, 
and popular attention is attracted to the historic 
events, which they have all faithfully sought to pre- 
sent, the intention of the present volume will be 
accomplished. 

J. H. L. 

La Fayette, Indiana, 1908. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — La Salle and the Exploration . . i 



II. — French Dominion .... 

III. — British Occupation 

IV. — How Spanish Rule Affected Indiana 

V. — American Conquest 

VI. — The Pioneers .... 

VII. — Indiana Territory — 1 763-1816 

VIII.— The New State— 1816 

IX. — Early Churches in Indiana . 

X. — Crimes of the Border 

XI. — The Trail — from Birch-Bark Canoe to 
Electric Trolley ... 

XII. — The Social Experiments at New Har 
mony ..... 

XIII. — In the Forties and Fifties 



240 
271 
XIV. — Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 293 



XV. — Picturesque Indiana 
XVI. — An Indiana Type 
XVII. — Letters and Art in Indiana 
XVIII. — Education in Indiana 



15 
26 

32 

44 

60 

106 

139 
166 

182 



325 
336 
350 
409 



viii Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIX. — The Quality of the People . . . 448 

XX. — Agriculture in Indiana .... 459 

XXI. — Natural Resources .... 479 

XXII. — The State Civilization in Indiana as 

Shown by her Laws . . . 493 

Bibliography ...... 525 

Index ....... 529 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGB 

Scenery along the Tippecanoe . . Frontispiece ^ 

From a photograph. 

Robert Cavelier de la Salle . . . . \ / 

From an engraving of the original painting. 

"The Missionaries Came FROM Afar" . . .18- 

Redrawn from an old print. 

A Typical Pioneer Scene . , , . , 62 '' 

Redrawn by Marie Goth from an old print. 

The Spinning-Wheel Was the Stringed Instru- 
ment of the Household . . . . .64 

The Heroism of the Pioneer Women . . . 68 ^ 

From an old print. 

A Map of Indiana in 1817 . . . . . 80 '^ 

From an old print. 

A View of the Ohio River from Hanover 

College . . . . . . , 92 ^ 

The Ohio was the front door into Indiana. 
From a photograph. 

The Site of Tippecanoe Battle Ground at the 

Present Time . . . . . . .120-^ 



Illustrations 



Prophet's Rock . , , . . . .122'^ 

The Prophet stood on the high ground and chanted 
war songs in a loud voice and assured his followers 
of victory. 

William Henry Harrison ..... 130' 
From an engraving after the painting by Chappel. 

The Old State House at Corydon, Indiana . . 136 • 

From a photograph by Mowrer. 

"Constitutional Elm" at Corydon, Indiana. . 140 

This elm is still standing. 
From a photograph by Mowrer. 

An Old Indiana Bridge ..... 194 ^ 

These picturesque old bridges are fast giving place to 

modern iron structures. 
From a photograph. 

The Indian Persisted in Believing that the 
Threatening Creature Was an Offense to the 
Gentle River ....... 206 ■" 

From an old print. 

"Journeying to their New Homes you Passed 
People Seated in the Great Canvas-topped 
Conestoga Wagons" . ..... 216 

From an old print. 
"We Could Hear the Driver Winding his Horn 

AND IT ALL SeEMED TOO FiNE AND GrAND " . . 220 

From an old print. 

The Old Canal and the Deserted Towpath . . 226 ^ 

Old Mahogany Furniture Brought to the 
Wabash by River and Canal . . . 274 

From a photograph. 



Illustrations xi 



PAGB 



The Dress of the Forties ..... 276 • 
From a photograph of the period. 

An Advertisement of the Underground Rail- 
way . . . ...... 284 <^ 

(From The Western Citizen, published July, 1844.) 

One of the Old Colonial Homes Long Since 

Passed INTO other Uses ..... 290 • 

Soldiers' AND Sailors' Monument . . . 320/ 

A View on one of the Beautiful River Roads of 

Indiana ........ 326' 

The Entrance to Donnehue's Cave in Lawrence 

County, Southern Indiana .... 328, 

From a photograph. 

The Clifty Falls, near Madison, Indiana . . 330 ^ 

One of the Gorges of Montgomery County . 332 ^ 

An Old Mill ....... 334 - 

One comes upon these old mills unexpectedly at a turn 
of the road, set amidst the most charming scenery. 
From a photograph. 

Albert Henderson ...... 338 ' 

The Early Poets all Sang of the Beauties of 

Forests and Streams ..... 352^ 

Benjamin Harrison ...... 394 , 

From a photograph by Clark, Indianapolis. 

The Daughter of Chief Massaw .... 400 ^ 

From a sketch from life by William Winter on the 
Miami Reservation. 



Xll 



Illustrations 



A Miami Indian ....... 

Sketched from life by William Winter on the Miami 
Reservation. 

Young's Chapel, Consolidated School, Union 
Township, Montgomery County, Indiana . 
Hacks ready to start home. 

A Scene near Hanover College . . . . 

From a photograph. 

Consolidated School in Union Township 
From a photograph. 

From the Stately Entrance You Look out over 
THE Beautiful Campus of "St. Mary's of the 
Woods" ........ 

Student Building, Indiana University, Bloom- 
INGTON, Indiana ...... 

From a photograph. 

Industrial Training in the Public Schools . 
From a photograph by Miner, Fort Wayne, Ind. 

Cabinet Work Done in the Public Schools of 
Bluffton ........ 

Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University 

"Often from Morning until Night there was a 
Continual Rumble of Wheels, and when the 
Rush was Greatest there never was a Minute 
that Wagons were not in Sight" 
From an old print. 



PAGB 

404- 



4i2y 



/ 



424 
426 ' 

428 , 

432 
440 

442 . 
446 - 

454 



The Entrance to School Garden, Delphi, Indiana 460 

Children Crating their Tomato Crop in the 
School Garden at Delphi, Indiana . . . 464 



Illustrations xiii 

PAGE 

Prize Crop Raised by a Member op the Boys' 

Corn Club in Laporte County, Indiana . . 468'^ 

The Entrance to Purdue University . . . 472^ 

The Picturesque Sand Dunes Cast up by the 

Great Lakes ....... 482 -^ 

Lower Falls Cataract, Styner's Falls . . 490 ^ 

Such falls as Styner's Cataract await their develop- 
ment as generators of electric power. 

The State Capitol, Indianapolis . . » . 500 ' 

From a photograph by W. H. Bass Photo Co, 

/ 

The Indiana Reform School for Boys . . . 512 

From a photograph by Deweese, Plainfield, Ind. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 

The author gratefully acknowledges the kindness of 
those who have assisted in the illustration of this vol- 
ume by permitting the use of photographs belonging to 
them. Among the friends who have so helped her 
are: Mrs. Gordon Ball, Mrs. J. H. Styner, Mrs. Julius 
Hargrave, Mr. William M. Blatchley, Mr. Lawrence 
McTumin, Mr. E. L. Hendricks, Mr. Samuel D. Symmes, 
Mr. Claude Millar, Mr. E. G. Bunnell, Mr. John F. 
Haines, Mr. W. A. Wirt, the President of Indiana Uni- 
versity, the President of Hanover College, and the 
Sister Superior of St. Mary 's-of -the- Woods. Thanks 
are also offered to Hon. Amos Butler and Superin- 
tendent Fassett A. Cotton, who went over certain 
chapters which were concerned with matters on which 
they are authorities, and enabled the author to speak 
with the more confidence regarding them. 



" Whatever the worth of the present work may be, I have striven 
throughout that it should never be a 'drum and trumpet history.' 
If some of the conventional figures of military and political history 
occupy in my pages less than the space usually given them, it is 
because I have had to find a place for figures little heeded in com- 
mon history — the figures of the missionary, the poet, the painter, 
the merchant, and the philosopher." 

Green's Short History of the English People. 



HISTORIC INDIANA 



CHAPTER I 

LA SALLE AND THE EXPLORATION 

FLOWING through the most fertile part of the 
land which stretched from the Alleghanies to 
the Mississippi, was the beautiful river known 
to the Indians as the Ouabache. It was through the 
wilderness bordering on that stream that the ex- 
plorers came who first revealed to Europeans the 
country south of the Great Lakes. 

We are familiar with this domain as a busy section 
of an established country. We know it as a group of 
great States, dotted with thriving towns and crossed 
by thousands of railways; whose trains flash past 
numberless cultivated farms, and carry their products 
to the great cities, which have grown up within the 
territory. But this is only recent history. 

Three centuries ago the region north of the Ohio, 
then covered with a dense wilderness, was a land of 
adventure, of tragedy, and of romance. Here the 
red man, tracking through his endless forests, en- 
countered a new race, that was to deprive him of his 
hunting-grounds. Other events contributed to the 



2 Historic Indiana 

stirring elements of the drama. Scarcely had the 
canoes of the white race crossed the Lakes, and drifted 
down the rivers, of what is now known as Indiana, 
before the history of the Northwest was but the echo 
of the strife between the Powers of the Old World, 
and the ominous contest between their colonists 
with the aborigines. It requires a little imagination 
to realize that kings and monarchs exercised do- 
minion over Indiana. Nevertheless, from the time 
that the gallant La Salle opened the w^ay, until the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, all of the 
territory of which it is a part was an interna- 
tional shuttlecock. The whole Mississippi Valley 
was claimed, ceded, and re-ceded by the nations of 
Europe, as well as by the native chiefs and the 
American government. 

During all of this time, the tragic part of its history 
was the ever-present menace of the savage tribes, 
who were being despoiled of their heritage. Such con- 
ditions can hardly be called prosaic, and when the 
true story of explorer, friar, fur-trader, and pioneer 
are added, it would be a tale hard to match. 

It was more than a hundred and seventy-five years 
after Columbus discovered America, before any Euro- 
pean explored the country south of the Lakes, and 
revealed those magnificent regions to the world. 
The beginning was the first journey of La Salle. For 
fifty years the English settlers had been peopling 
the Atlantic Coast, while Canada had been the ob- 
jective point of the adventurous French. Following 
the accessible water-routes, their explorers had reached 
out along the region north of the Lakes, as far as Lake 
Superior; and their fur trading-posts and mission- 
houses had been established at the strategic points. 



La Salle and the Exploration 3 

South of Detroit and the Lakes, the vast territory of 
fertile soil and more temperate climate lay unexplored. 
This was from fear of the fierce Iroquois tribes, who 
intimidated the most courageous traders. 

In the year 1669, a new name was enrolled among 
the intrepid spirits who were willing to dare further 
dangers of the wilderness for fame and fortune; and 
the heroic figure of Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, 
appears. This brave young man had come out from 
France three years before, and after studying the 
explorations already made by others, and addressing 
himself to the acquisition of seven or eight Indian 
languages, he considered himself prepared to under- 
take the realization of his dreams of exploration. 
Selling all he possessed to defray the cost of the ex- 
pedition, he threw his whole energies into preparation 
for the daring venture. His plan was to explore the 
far country where the "Great River" was said to 
be, and claim the territory for France. " With a little 
band of fourteen followers, in four frail canoes, he 
started on the journey from Montreal. The hints 
grudgingly imparted by the natives, as to the Great 
River which flowed into the sea, as to fabulous mines 
in the southwest, and as to a passage to China, he 
followed eagerly. Except the information regarding 
the river, the tales were but will-o'-the-wisps. 

The "Mississippi" was a name repeated about 
Canadian camp-fires and in the manors of French 
chevaliers long before any bold voyageur had travelled 
far enough from his fellows to reach its banks. Four 
years after La Salle's initial journey toward the west, 
Joliet and Marquette, going by Lake Michigan and 
the Illinois River, reached the "Father of Waters"; 
and published their achievement of that fact to the 



4 Historic Indiana 

world, but it is claimed that this first voyage of La 
Salle was probably by another route. The eminent 
historian Parkman tells us that, by the loss of old 
records, which have disappeared since 1756, we are 
deprived of the account of La Salle's movements dur- 
ing the two years following his departure from Canada, 
on this first mission of adventure. The memorandum 
that is preserved says that, after leaving Lake Erie, 
six or seven leagues distant, he finally came to a 
stream which proved to be a branch of the river 
we call the Ohio; and that descending it for a long 
distance he joined that river. Some have maintained 
that he went beyond the confluence of the Ohio with 
the Mississippi. As the source of the Wabash is near 
the west end of Lake Erie, a voyage down that river 
would naturally lead to the discovery of the Ohio. 
Doubtless, then, the Wabash country was approached 
from Lake Erie and the Maumee River, as this route 
was followed in later journey ings of the French. After 
crossing the broad Lakes in their slight boats, and 
paddling up the Maumee to its source, they probably 
made a short portage of their canoes and camp lug- 
gage to the head -waters of the Ouabache, only a few 
miles overland, and launched their boats for the first 
voyage through Indiana. 

No incident could appeal more to the imagination 
than this advent of those birch-bark canoes, filled with 
the denizens of countries overseas, paddling down 
the newly discovered stream whose rippling waters 
had flowed for centuries through the vast forest, all 
undreamed of by white men. The shores they passed 
were lined with enormous forest trees, festooned 
with vines and filled with singing birds. Fish abounded 
in the placid stream, and wild game came unafraid 




Robert Cavelier de la Salle. 

From an engraving of the original painting. 



La Salle and the Exploration 5 

to the water's brink. Leagues on leagues and miles 
on miles of unknown lands, sparsely inhabited by 
savage peoples, stretched away from the narrow 
river which carried the slight canoes with their hand- 
ful of men. It is a picture to remain in the mind, 
this first coming of the old world into the new west. 
Such slight records of those earlier journeys have 
been preserved that we must await further research 
for verification, and for details of the happenings. 
We know that on later voyages, in the years 16 71 
and 1672, and again in 1679-1680, La Salle entered 
the State from Lake Michigan through the St. Joseph 
River and traversed the northwestern part of what 
is now Indiana. Following the suggestions of the 
Indians, he ascended the St. Joseph to about three 
miles from the present site of South Bend. Here a 
slight elevation separates the waters that drain into 
the Gulf of Mexico from those that flow toward the 
St. LawTence, and the land flattens out into great 
stretches of swamp and meadow. Across the grassy 
plains, covered with game and wild fowl, and strewn 
with the skulls and bones of buffalo, they carried 
their boats four or five miles to the origin of the Kan- 
kakee. Coming to a little clear thread of water, in 
the surrounding swamp, it is recorded that they set 
their canoes on it, and pushed down the sluggish 
streamlet, looking at a distance like men who sailed 
on land. Fed by an unceasing tribute of the spongy 
soil, which extended on either side over sixteen hun- 
dred square miles of valley, the stream quickly widened 
into a winding river, with its two thousand bends. 
On this stream they floated amidst that voiceless soli- 
tude toward the Illinois, and through it to the 
Mississippi, which was the goal of their wanderings. 



6 Historic Indiana 

From these two journeys through the region that 
is now called Indiana, La Salle may in truth be called 
its discoverer. The routes he opened up were followed 
for many decades by succeeding voyagers. The two 
parts of the State that he explored were widely dif- 
ferent in their physical features. The Wabash Valley 
was heavily wooded, and the surface of the country 
high and rolling, w^hile the lands south of Lake Mich- 
igan were vast plains dotted with lakes. The ex- 
plorers wrote to France that they had found the 
country good and pleasant ; that the climate was 
admirable, and the soil extraordinarily fertile. They 
found game in abundance, and mentioned partic- 
ularly the wild turkey. 

These first excursions of La Salle into the Indiana 
wilderness, at the opening of his career, and before 
jealous enemies tried to thwart his far-reaching plans 
of dominion, were full of hope and expectation. 
Later there were stirring tales of his courageous ad- 
ventures on the Mississippi; the history of his long 
journeys to France for authority and funds, the coun- 
terplotting of Canadian foes, his triumphant recog- 
nition by the King, and, last of all, his early death 
at the age of forty-three, in the Louisiana wilderness. 
In the preface to JouteVs Journal, the following recog- 
nition of La Salle's services to France places him 
among the illustrious heroes sent out by the Grand 
Monarch. There it is urged: 

"Let us transmit their names to posterity in our writings, 
for the consequences of their labor are most honorable 
and advantageous to the Nation. ... La Salle was dig- 
nified, bold, undaunted, dextrous, insinuating, not to be 
discouraged at anything, ready at extricating himself 
out of any difficulty. No way apprehensive of the greatest 



La Salle and the Exploration 7 

fatigues. Wonderful steady in adversity, and, what was 
of extraordinary use, well versed in several languages. 
Having such extraordinary talents, he was very accept- 
ably employed in these affairs"^ 

and added a domain larger than Central Europe to the 
possessions of his sovereign. 

The quaint language of the faithful Henri de Tonty, 
friend of La Salle, in his tribute to that leader, pic- 
turesquely presents the discoveries as they impressed 
the explorers themselves. 

"Monsieur, the plunderers of your fortune cannot take 
away that discovery, or blot out the World you then 
opened. And what is Europe compared to this vast 
country? At the height of his magnificence, Louis cannot 
picture to himself the grandeur of this Western Empire. 
France is but the palm of his hand beside it. It stretches 
from endless snow to endless heat; its breadth no man 
may guess. Nearly all the native tribes affiliate readily 
with the French. We have, to dispute us, only the Eng- 
lish, who hold a little strip by the Atlantic, the Dutch 
with smaller holdings inland, and a few Spaniards along 
the Gulf. It is an Empire, which Louis might drop France 
itself, to grasp." 

There can be no doubt that La Salle had a clear 
comprehension of the value, to France, of his explor- 
ations, for he not only established trading-posts for 
gain, but he also endeavored to carry thither people 
to colonize and preempt the territory. The sad ending 
of his short life came all too soon for the successful 
carrying-out of his dreams of an Empire, but enough 
was accomplished by La Salle and Tonty to place 

» Joutel's Journal of La Salle's Last Voyage, Introduction, page 
J 6, Reprint of Caxton Club, 1896. 



8 Historic Indiana 

them as the great frontier knights of the middle West 
in the dawn of its history. 

For many years after these first voyagers paddled 
down the Wabash, the only travellers to the region 
were the hardy and adventurous coureurs de bois. 
No records were kept of their journeys, — how soon 
they followed the explorers, or how often they came 
and went; but long before the French government 
established military outposts, these wandering traders 
and trappers, with an occasional zealous priest, were 
the sole visitors to the wilds of what is now Indiana. 

The coureurs de hois of Canada ranged over the 
whole northern and western part of the new con- 
tinent from Hudson Bay to Louisiana in search of 
adventure, and to trade with the Indians. They be- 
longed, largely, to the lower classes of adventurers 
who came out continually from France; but their 
numbers were constantly augmented by impoverished 
members of the nobility, or reckless gallants who 
were reduced in fortune, or fugitives from justice. 
Inspired by love of adventure, or seeking the oblivion 
of the forest, these men of gentle blood joined fortunes 
with the reckless, shiftless voyageurs. Hunting, trap- 
ping fur-bearing animals, trading with the Indians, 
and living with the natives in utter abandonment of 
previous civilization, was the life into which they 
drifted. As they rowed down the streams, their 
paddles kept time to the gay strains : 

Tous les printemps, . . . 
Tant de nouvelles . . . 

Tous les amants . 
Changent de maitresses . . . 

Jamais le bon vin ne m'endort . . , 
L' amour me reveille 



La Salle and the Exploration 



Tous les amants . 

Changent des maitresses . . . 
Qu'ils changent qui voudront , 

Pour moi je garde la mienne . . . 
Le bon vin n'endort . 

L'amour me reveille . 

They married the squaws; sold spirits to the braves 
against all law; ofttimes discarded all clothing; and 
sometimes conspired against the authorities. They 
have been known to leave the explorer or missionary 
alone in the wilderness, to the mercies of the savages. 
Such were those dauntless adventurers, the coureurs 
de hois, who were peculiar to early Canadian life and 
history. As most of the territory of which Indiana 
formed a part was included in that domain in the 
eighteenth century, these romantic characters were 
its first white inhabitants. They did not found any 
homes or towns. They came singing down the rivers 
in their Hght canoes, and lodged with the Indians, 
traded with them, drank with them, and monopolized 
the forest bargaining. It was through these gay 
French vagabonds that the savages obtained their 
bright-colored blankets, their gaudy trinkets, and 
also the powder, the arms, and the firewater, which 
made them more dangerous than before. Only such 
irresponsible, weather-hardened voyageurs could have 
endured the privations of that savage life; and their 
daring adventurous spirit secured to them the fur- 
trade of the forest. Not a trace of their existence in 
Indiana remained at the time of the conquest of 1779, 
when the French still inhabited the posts. No name, 
habitation, or landmark was left of those who thus 



lo Historic Indiana 

entered and disappeared from the rivers and woods of 
the Wabash, and whose history reads Hke a legend. 

When the first white explorers came down the 
Indiana rivers, they found few settled tribes of Indians. 
This was on account of the recent Iroquois war. But 
later, numerous Indian tribes, of many different 
names, roamed the territory, and all belonged to the 
great Algonquin race, which occupied the whole of 
the middle West, and the New England coast. These 
allied families of Algonquins, while often warring 
among themselves, united their strength in terror 
of their bitter foes located on either side of them. 
The cruel Iroquois separated the Eastern forces by 
occupying the region now known as New York and 
southward; while the bloodthirsty Siouan tribes held 
the country west of the Mississippi. The Miami con- 
federacy, whose barbarian villages dotted the central 
and northern part of Indiana, included the Weas, the 
Foxes, the Piankeshaws, the Pottawattomies, the Shaw- 
nees, the Ouiatanons, and the Kickapoos, with whose 
barbarous names the early settlers, alas! were to 
become so familiar, and who were all branches of the 
Algonquin race. 

The regions now called Indiana and Kentucky were 
reserved as hunting-ground, but they were also per- 
petual battle-fields. Across this expanse surged these 
countless allied tribes and their hereditary enemies. 
Back and forth from east to west, from north to 
south, from Florida to the Dakotas, they fought in 
endless warfare against each other and against their 
foes. To and fro, defeating or defeated, seldom utterly 
vanquished, unless exterminated, they came and 
went on the war-path, always planning to return to 
the fray, if checkmated in their savage raids, when 



La Salle and the Exploration n 

new combinations with more tribes should render 
them strong enough for a fresh attack. 

All of the tribes were passionately fond of the ex- 
citement of games of chance, and sat about the fires 
and gambled until their last possessions were gone; 
staking clothing, weapons, pipes, ornaments, or wife 
on the last throw of the dice. It is said that if invited 
to "come eat" it was unheard of to refuse; the per- 
son invited took his dish and spoon and went ; grunted 
"Ho!" upon entering, and to every remark that 
interested him. 

Many of the wigwams or huts of the Indians were 
fashioned of bark or of skins and were covered on the 
inside with rude sketches of scenes from the chase 
and battle, commemorating their deeds of valor. 
Most of the aborigines painted their faces and bodies 
with soot, ashes, and the juice of plants. Very often 
they were cruelly tattooed. They were naturally 
very fond of ornaments, and were easily beguiled 
by gifts of finery. One possession all Indians valued 
above any other, was the belt of wampum. This con- 
sisted of beads, white and purple, made from the 
inner part of certain shells. They were made at the 
expenditure of great care and labor. The wampum 
was at once their currency, ornament, pen, ink, and 
parchment. It is affirmed that no compact, no speech, 
or clause of a speech, to the representatives of an- 
other nation, had any force unless confirmed by the 
delivery of a string or belt of wampum. It was the 
task of certain braves, detailed for that duty, to 
remember and reproduce what each bead recorded. 
The Indian's idea of music was crude, discordant, 
and unpleasant sounds, a drum or tom-tom being the 
most universal instrument of tone. His perceptions 



12 Historic Indiana 

of good and evil were shadowy, and belief in a 
future state of reward and punishment was by no 
means universal. He thanked the Good Spirit for 
blessings and prayed to the Evil Spirit, whom he re- 
garded as the agent of disease, death, and mischance. 

The Indian had a very material notion of the 
happy hunting-grounds, and his idea of the fate 
of the wicked was that he should be doomed to 
eat ashes in cold dreary regions where there was 
always snow. All tribes were the dupes of their 
medicine-men, sorcerers, and witches. As a matter 
of course, so limited an intelligence believed in 
magic, in the realities of dreams, and in signs 
and tokens. Their limited knowledge of the laws 
of nature kept them in perpetual thraldom to fears 
of which civilized man knows nothing. Although 
inhabiting the most desirable area, and living in the 
most favorable climate on the continent they had 
attained little intellectual or material advancement 
and gave no promise of any. Their life was a round 
of hunting, eating, and fighting. In summer the 
braves were hunting and fishing when not on the 
war-path, but with little thought of the future, they 
stored up meagrely for the needs of the long and cruel 
winter. The men condescended to build wigwams, 
fashion the weapons, make their wonderful pipes, and 
shape their marvellous canoes, but to the women fell 
all the drudgery. They gathered the fire-wood, dressed 
the skins, made the cordage and cloth, and prepared 
the food. In addition they tilled the land for the 
scanty crops of corn and beans and pumpkins. They 
planted, hoed, and harvested laboriously with the 
little stone tools. On the march it was the squaws 
that bore the burdens and slaughtered the game. In 



La Salle and the Exploration 13 

battle they often bore a part. In consequence of 
their hard life they changed early from comely girls 
to hideously repulsive hags, many of them more 
fierce, cruel, and vindictive in war than the men. 
The children showed no advancement beyond the 
generation before and were trained in the grim lessons 
of savage stolidity, superstition, and endurance shown 
by their ancestors. When food was plenty they all 
gorged to repletion, and when there was no provender 
they lived on the roots, bark, and buds of trees. 

Indians showed no tenderness or consideration 
towards the sick or disabled. Each shared with all, 
in weal or woe. Upbraiding or complaints were 
unheard. 

The Miami tribes of Indians that were living in 
Indiana were of a degraded type, who practised 
cannibalism in its most revolting forms, and con- 
tinued the practice for a hundred years after La Salle's 
appearance in the. West. They had great dread of 
the evil spirits, whom they tried to propitiate, charm, 
and- cajole. A description of these natives by an 
explorer characterizes the roving Indians as possess- 
ing the sagacity of a hound, the penetrating sight 
of a lynx, the cimning of a fox, the agility of a bound- 
ing roe, and the unconquerable fierceness of a tiger. 

There have been many romantic notions of the 
Indian, and the early settlers were often pressed to 
the opposite sentiment of vindictive hate. To un- 
prejudiced persons the native was recognized as full 
of contradictions. The same man who would give 
way to demoniacal fury, at other times held himself 
in the most taciturn self-restraint. His pride would 
sustain him at the stake but did not prevent his beg- 
ging for whiskey or cast-off food. His skill at hunting 



14 Historic Indiana 

and trapping showed him full of perception of nature 
and his resources in constructing boats, traps, pits, 
and spears gave evidence of his cunning, but he 
had little power of reasoning. They had their own 
form of humor and were fond of telling tales of their 
prowess by the camp-fire. A practical joke, or the 
awkwardness of a white man would move them to 
roars of laughter, and like the white, man they were 
fond of a joke at the expense of the weaker sex. Such 
were the natives of the Indiana region when the white 
man came in, and with whom the coming settlers 
must be brought into close contact. From the mis- 
takes of governments, and the impossibility of the 
two civilizations mingling peaceably, both races suf- 
fered untold misery. No imaginary tale could be 
more harassing. Their woes appear on each succeed- 
ing page of history, insuring them the sympathy of 
posterity. After the natives acquired from the white 
man the use of whiskey and firearms, they became 
what Mr. Roosevelt terms the most formidable savage 
foes ever encountered by colonists of European stock. 



CHAPTER II 

FRENCH DOMINION 

A CENTURY and a half between La Salle and 
the beginning of history in the Indiana ter- 
ritory! Truly the new domain waits for its 
settlement. Silent as the records are of any account 
of. life in the wilderness, we know that the hardy 
coureurs de hois came down the rivers and sojourned 
among the Indians, trapping and trading for pelts. 
"For a century and a half fur was king," 

A few fugitive voyageurs among the more adven- 
turous probably tarried, but the first French colo- 
nists, or rather the first inhabitants who made their 
homes at the posts and brought their families out 
with them, were the soldiers. The wandering boatmen 
came and went singly and in pairs without intention 
of remaining. It was their route for barter, the Indi- 
ana rivers being a part of the marvellous continuous 
waterway from the Lakes to the Mississippi. 

"In the opening of the North American Continent," 
says Mr. Ogg, "the Frenchman had this great advantage 
over some of his rivals — that he entered the land from the 
right direction, and at a very strategic point. The St. 
Lawrence set them on the most inviting path to the vast 
interior, through the Great Lakes and into the eastern 
tributaries of the Mississippi, finally down that noble 

15 



i6 Historic Indiana 

stream to the Gulf. As a consequence of this, and to the 
further fact that by nature the Frenchmen who came to 
America were of a more roving disposition than the Eng- 
lish, their explorations moved much more rapidly. They 
had ranged and mapped the country continuously from 
Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico, before the English yet 
knew the upper courses of even the James, the Hudson, 
and the Connecticut."^ 

And yet, if their exploration and trade were more 
sweeping, their colonization was far less effective and 
permanent in that far West. 

Following La Salle's constant urging of the impor- 
tance of establishing military posts from Quebec to 
New Orleans, for the purpose of maintaining the 
sovereignty of France, against the Spanish and the 
English, the government of Louis XIV. made some 
weak establishments on the Lakes and the Mississippi; 
but they were barely a roof for the wandering mis- 
sionaries to the savage nations, or a trading station. 
No posts were established on the Wabash until 1720, 
and the visitations of the zealous priests to the In- 
dians were the only means of control which France 
maintained over the wilds of Indiana until that time. 
During all this period the missionaries w^ere always 
followed, and sometimes preceded, by a class of 
traders who gave intoxicating liquors to the Indians 
in exchange for furs and pelts. "The drink among 
the Indians is the greatest obstacle to Christianity," 
wrote the good friars; "they never purchase it, but 
to plunge into the most furious orgies of riot and 
bloodshed." For all their despair of the savage char- 
acter, the Jesuit fathers and the holy friars persisted 
in their labors, growing old and perishing in their 

> Ogg, Fredk., Opening of the Mississippi. 



French Dominion 17 

attempts. Younger ones stepped into their vacant 
places, and took passage with the voyageurs whose 
little barks penetrated every wilderness. 

The gradual movement westward by the British, 
from the Atlantic Coast, was what prompted the 
French to establish new posts, and strengthen old 
ones, along the water-routes from Canada to Louis- 
iana, Several prominent points along the courses 
were selected and fortified, in the rude frontier fashion 
of palisades and blockhouses. In these primitive 
stockades were installed a handful of French soldiers 
and their families, the priest who guided their very 
wandering footsteps back to religion, an occasional 
slave, some half-breed Indians, and a few domestic 
animals — all of whom were a part of the French 
system of trade and religion. In a short while each 
had a plot of garden cultivated by the women, and 
fruit soon hung on their trees. The posts were not 
powerful enough for conquest, but they were sufficient 
to protect the trade with the natives, and to that 
industry the activities of the lazy little colonies were 
mainly limited. The post was a convenient rendez- 
vous for the trapper and hunter, and the voyageurs; 
and a point from which the priest reached out to 
convert the Indians to his faith. 

As time went on and trade increased, it came about 
that, beside the commandants, the most prominent 
individuals at the trading-posts were the French 
merchants. The old French merchant, at his post, 
was the head man of the settlement. Careful, frugal, 
without much enterprise, judgment, or rigid virtue, 
he was employed in procuring skins from the Indians 
or traders, in exchange for manufactured goods. He 
kept on good terms with the Indians, and frequently 



i8 Historic Indiana 

fostered a large number of half-breed children. The 
intermittent traffic on the rivers formed the means 
of communication between these solitary posts and 
the outside world. Post Ouiatanon, the first estab- 
lished on the Ouabache, was near the site of the present 
city of La Fayette, and opposite a group of Indian 
villages of the Ouiatanon tribes. This post and Fort 
Miamis, now Fort Wayne, were under the rule of the 
Canadian Governor and reported to the commandant 
at Detroit; while the post of Vincennes, established 
in 1 73 1, belonged to the Louisiana dominion — Terre 
Haute forming the dividing line between the two dis- 
tricts. Of the Ouiatanon post, so beautifully located, 
and connected with so many traditions of the past, 
few traces remain. Its location and career are part 
of the history of the aboriginal time. The city of La 
Fayette, which later was founded in that beautiful 
environment, is located on the hills north of the Indian 
hamlet. Ouiatanon was the head of navigation on 
the Wabash for the larger pirogues, on account of 
the shallow rapids below the present city. All 
peltries destined for Canada must here be trans- 
ferred to canoes, and this made the post a natural 
resting place and point for barter. Twenty thousand 
skins a year were shipped from Fort Ouiatanon 
during 1720 and the decade following. 

"To watch the English and expel them in case they 
approach" were the directions to the commandant 
who established the post at Fort Miamis, now Fort 
Wayne. The point was an important one as it was 
near the head of the Maumee River, where the voya- 
geurs from over the Lakes re-embarked their canoes 
for the long river journey. Unlike Ouiatanon, it con- 
tinued through many vicissitudes and much warlike 




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French Dominion 19 

history, to be the nucleus of a town, and in the present 
day has grown into one of the important cities of the 
State. 

Post Vincennes also has had a continuous existence 
from the early part of the eighteenth century; which 
in Indiana seems like ancient history. The story of 
Vincennes and vicinity is a large part of the history 
of the French impression on the State. There were 
a few scattered families identified with the history 
of other sections, but all that Indiana knew of a com- 
munity largely French may be claimed by its oldest 
town. In 1787, an American soldier writing from 
Vincennes and giving a description of the mixed pop- 
ulation of nine hundred French and four hundred 
Americans, said: "This town has been settled longer 
than Philadelphia, and one half of the houses are yet 
covered with bark like Indian wigwams." 

Life at the different posts at that early time was 
much alike. We are told that each had its large com- 
mons for the pasturage of stock, also its common 
fields, in which each individual's tract was marked 
off. The houses were grouped about the fort within 
a stockade as a protection from the savages. After 
all, the most abiding memory of the influences of the 
French posts in the early settlements, is that of the 
brave missionaries, so often spoken of in every record 
of that remote past. None of the posts contained a 
large population. The long distances from the coast, 
either at Quebec or New Orleans, the constant danger 
of surrounding savages, the rude quarters and great 
privations, made the interior settlements unattractive 
to the gregarious French people. Their garden plots 
were attractive but the agriculture was very shiftless. 
As the soil was fertile, Indian com, wheat, tobacco, and 



20 Historic Indiana 

all kinds of fruits and melons were easily produced. 
In time they possessed swine and black cattle, and 
brought horses from the Spanish settlements in the 
Southwest. The only vehicle they ever acquired, in 
their most luxurious days, was the two- wheeled ca- 
leche, which was the only serviceable thing in the 
wilderness without roads. The rivers were the ar- 
teries of commerce, and no one could pole a boat like 
the French Canadian. The priest and chapel held 
the little isolated communities to something of the 
old forms and ceremonies of their abandoned civil- 
ization, kept them to the prayers and sacraments, 
taught them to transplant some of the arts of living 
to the frontier. 

They had windmills to grind the wheat into flour, 
when the earliest English settlers, who lived in a 
more scattered way, had only corn-meal ground by 
hand. The women did not spin and weave as the 
English pioneers did, and the family washing was 
beaten on the banks of the stream, as was the custom 
in their home country. French cookery, even in those 
rude surroundings, was superior to that of other fron- 
tier people. Game was plentiful, and their fare in- 
cluded fish, prairie chicken, roast duck, venison pasty, 
and broiled quail. The costume of these people was 
picturesque and becoming — it consisted of a buck- 
skin coat, knee breeches, moccasins, and always leg- 
gins; a tasselled capote, or in summer a peaked hat 
of straw, braided by the women, as they gossiped on 
the little front piazzas. They were fond of wearing 
a bit of bright color around the throat and at the 
waist, or bedecked themselves with beads in Indian 
fashion. In cold weather both men and women wore 
a long cloak with a hood. The women looked much 



French Dominion 21 

like the peasants in the old country, with bodice, 
short full skirt, and little caps. 

With true French vivacity and love for social life 
and amusement, the inhabitants of each little post 
celebrated feast days, name days, christenings, and 
weddings with dancing, songs, processions, and feasts; 
lasting in the case of weddings for two or three days. 
F^tes on the river, a row by moonlight, a Christmas 
morning carol beneath each window, always the New 
Year's calls by the gentlemen, and the Mardi Gras 
celebration before the penances of Lent, were the 
simple round of frontier festivities. We can imagine 
the scene. Clustered within a palisaded enclosure, 
surrounded by the interminable forest, were the rude, 
little whitewashed cabins, bedecked with vines and 
flowers, and a tiny garden at the side ; in the narrow 
street the small, wiry, dark-skinned French peasants 
trooping about, babbling in their strange Canadian 
jargon, the negro slaves, perchance, answering in 
Creole patois ; some neighborhood Indians, clad in gay 
blankets and wonderful eagle-feather head-dresses, 
looking on in grave curiosity — silent, as the hab- 
itants were noisy and chattering. Far from the lands 
of their ancestry, each nationality lives out its racial 
traits in the remote wilderness home. 

It has always been noted that between wars, there 
was general friendliness between the French and In- 
dians, in striking contrast to the enmity among the 
English and the red men. It was the policy of the 
English to remove the Indians, and of the French 
to attract them for purposes of trade. Hence, the 
natives often gathered in settlements around the 
French posts. They learned a little agriculture and 
Romanism, but, alas! they also acquired the taste 



22 Historic Indiana 

for rum, notwithstanding the selling of guns, amrriu- 
nition, and "firewater" was against the mandates 
of the King, and of prudence. 

The first slaves in Indiana were owned by these 
early French settlers. Their holding and treatment 
were regulated by the French government, in elab- 
orate laws, so that they were not left entirely to the 
mercy of the owners. The Canadian slaves were gen- 
erally Indians, called pants; and those of the Louisiana 
district were mostly negroes, brought from the French 
West Indies. The two races of slaves frequently inter- 
married, and the government required all to be bap- 
tized and instructed in the Roman Catholic faith. 
The frontier Frenchman was an easy master, lacking 
thrift and having no pressure of competition. 

In trading with the natives for peltries the settlers 
gave in exchange bright colored cloth, blankets, 
gunpowder, knives, hatchets, animal traps, kettles, 
hoes, war paint, ribbons, beads, and rum. By trading 
and trapping they collected great quantities of furs 
during the season, which were mostly carried to the 
Canadian market for European shipments. They 
raised wheat and ground it into flour at their com- 
munity windmills. Tobacco was raised and baled. 
Some pork was cured, then with no undue haste or 
competition these stores were accumulated, and when 
a sufficient cargo was secured, a fleet of batteaux 
would be formed, for mutual protection against the 
Indians, and the event of the year began ; that is the 
journey thither to Detroit and Montreal, or five hun- 
dred leagues down the rivers to New Orleans, which 
they called "going to town to see their friends." This 
trip down the river was a long, lazy, delightful journey 
to those pleasure-loving people. They drifted with 



French Dominion 23 

the current, telling endless stories of adventure, while 
they watched the ever-changing views on either shore. 
Sometimes convoys came from far-off Montreal, to 
enjoy the winter season. They stayed in New Orleans 
as long as they could, ofttimes until their money was 
gambled away. The more enterprising bartered 
their produce for merchandise, for the return trip, 
and carried back sugar, rice, cotton, and manufactured 
articles from France. After much feasting and many 
formal conges among acquaintances they departed 
for their homes, and then began the long, tedious, 
toilsome ascent of the river. 

Prom the time when France found it necessary 
to establish outposts, in 1720, to protect her interests, 
until the day that Quebec fell into the hands of Great 
Britain, there were struggles innumerable between 
the two Powers over their claims to the Western ter- 
ritory. These wars always involved the frontiers- 
men and the Indians in deadly conflicts, and the 
blackest pages in American colonial history are the 
sins, of the old world Powers in instigating the natives 
to massacre the settlers. At length, the English won 
the great victories at Quebec and along the Lakes. 
The acquisition of the whole of Canada followed. The 
Treaty of Peace was concluded in 1763. The English 
claim included the upper Indiana territory. The in- 
habitants remained at ease, heeding little of the great 
change of government and destiny; but the treaties 
of 1763 closed the brilliant explorations and dreams 
of American Empire for France. Illustrious ex- 
plorers, courtly cavaliers, devout priests, reckless 
voyageurs, skilful trappers, and frugal colonists had 
crossed the Atlantic and traversed the inland lakes 
and rivers to found a new French dominion and a 



24 Historic Indiana 

home in the West, "In the laying of the foundations 
for an abiding political power they failed. They 
could have maintained themselves as against the 
Spaniard or any other possible European competitor, 
except the very one with whom they had to contend. 
The contest was essentially a conflict of civilization, 
the results appear no less inevitable, than necessary 
to the future of the country." 

At the time of the cession to Great Britain there 
were probably north of the Ohio and east of the Mis- 
sissippi only about twelve hundred adults, eight hun- 
dred children, and nine hundred negroes who were 
slaves. Many of the French people retired to the 
western bank of the Mississippi, to the point now 
called St. Louis, rather than remain British subjects. 
The French colonies had always been dependencies. 
Gradually, as the control of the fur trade passed from 
France to England, the posts languished w^hen they 
had to depend upon themselves. After a few years, 
when the Americans in turn took them from the 
British, the forts were used by the young republic 
as outposts to protect the settlers against the Indians. 
Gradually they fell into desuetude, as the native 
tribes were sent to the farther frontiers. 1791 is given 
as the date of the final disappearance of Ouiatanon. 
Towns arose on the site of the other two French posts 
in Indiana territory, at Fort Wayne and Fort Vin- 
cennes. The little French posts of the early half of 
that century are only a memory. The log chapel 
where the black-robed priest christened the babe and 
married the blooming bride, has gone to decay. The 
vine-covered balcony and its gay peasant family 
have alike crumbled into dust. There are left no 
traces of the volatile, pleasure-loving people from 



French Dominion 25 

overseas, and the silent savage has vanished with 
his forests. But still a tinge of romance lin- 
gers over the palisaded station and its denizens. 
"Such," says Mr. Dunn in describing those denizens, 

"were the French settlers of Indiana — yet not such; for 
we have scanned too closely what we might esteem their 
faults, and given little heed to what we must admit to 
be their virtues. In many respects they were admirable. 
They were simple, honest, and patriotic. In their social 
life they were kindly, sympathetic, and generous. The 
ancient habitant rises before us lithe and erect as in his 
prime. The old capote is there, the beaded moccasins, 
the little ear-rings, and the black queue. His dark eyes 
glisten beneath his turban handkerchief as of yore. There 
stands his old caleche. He mounts upon it and moves 
away — away — away, until its creaking sounds no longer, 
and we realize that he is gone forever."^ 

» Dunn, J. P., History of Indiana, page. 130. 



CHAPTER III 

BRITISH OCCUPATION 

WHEN Great Britain secured Quebec and 
the control of the St. Lawrence from the 
French, her grasp of the Western depend- 
encies, along the waterways, followed naturally. 
The strongholds of French supremacy were in north- 
em and eastern America. The vast tract, inland, 
was acquired without more fighting, and its fortunes 
rose and fell with those of Canada. Within a few 
years of the time that Spain assumed dominion over 
the Mississippi River, and consequently come vitally 
into contact with the interests of its tributaries, which 
we mention elsewhere, England gained possession of the 
lands through which those rivers flowed. The history of 
the little settlements on the Maumee and the Wabash 
under English rule was part of the same period that 
the struggling settlements were hampered by Spanish 
interference, at New Orleans. 

The British crown owned the territory that is now 
Indiana less than twenty years. It occupied the 
scattered military posts scarcely fifteen years before 
General George Rogers Clark and his little band of 
American frontiersmen took possession of them in 
the year 1779. England's title to the wilderness do- 
main made little difference to the scattered French 

26 



British Occupation 27 

settlements on the Wabash. It being the policy of 
Great Britain to leave the customs, language, and 
religion im changed, the happy-go-lucky class of fron- 
tier Frenchmen cared little what government ruled. 

When the English troops took possession, in 1765, 
there were only eighty or ninety French families 
living at Post Vincennes; and there had been about 
fourteen families at Fort Ouiatanon during its oc- 
cupancy, and at the post in the northeastern part of 
the State there were nine or ten French houses. These 
three small colonies were, at that time, the only white 
settlements within the territory which is now the 
State of Indiana. After the British commandant, 
with a small detachment of redcoats, had taken 
possession of the fort, under the Cross of St. George 
instead of the Lilies of France, and issued a specific 
proclamation to the settlers, the isolated camps real- 
ized little difference by the change of sovereignty. 
When England took possession of every stronghold 
from St. Lawrence and the Lakes, south, there were 
scarcely any American colonists north of the Ohio 
River and west of the Alleghanies. The savage Iro- 
quois had prevented immigration overland. The 
American traders who came from the Atlantic col- 
onies, by way of the rivers, were a mere handful and 
lived among the French at the posts. As soon as 
Great Britain had extended her control over the West, 
many English traders and land hunters began to go 
thither. The home government immediately feared 
that the section might feel itself so remote, and be- 
come so self-reliant, that the settlers would declare 
an independent government. In consequence of this 
apprehension, the King of England issued a procla- 
mation forbidding any emigration to the newly 



28 Historic Indiana 

acquired section. Six years later, the commander- 
in-chief wrote to the Colonial Department, 

"as to increasing the settlements (northwest of the river, 
Ohio) to respectable provinces — and to colonization in 
general terms in the remote countries — I have conceived 
it altogether inconsistent with sound policy. I do not 
apprehend the inhabitants could have any commodities 
to barter for our manufactures, except skins and furs, 
which will naturally decrease as the country increases in 
people, and the deserts are cultivated; so that, in the 
course of a few years, necessity would force them to pro- 
vide manufactures of some kind themselves, and when 
all connection upheld by commerce with the mother coun- 
try shall cease, it may be expected that an independency in 
their government will soon follow." 

Notwithstanding all these prohibitions by the home 
government, there was an ever-increasing number 
of hardy pioneers, who ventured down the river from 
Pennsylvania, or tracked through the forests of Ken- 
tucky from Virginia and the Carolinas, to the territory 
northwest of the Ohio. A few of these came into 
Indiana. Despite the interdict of Great Britain, and 
the forbidding attitude of the savages, the population 
of the English colonists from tidewater kept in- 
creasing along the rivers of the West. During all the 
years of the British occupation, there was a constant 
menace to the whole border population south and 
north of the Ohio, from the Indians, who were be- 
coming more and more alarmed at the white man's 
invasion. It was a time of midnight surprises, swift 
and sudden attacks and massacres; then an uprising 
by the whites, and war to the death against the sav- 
ages. Year in and year out there were always alert 



British Occupation 29 

anxiety and dread of further disaster, while bitterness 
of feeling between the races grew ever more deadly. 
The Indians had no enduring confidence in French, 
Spanish, or English. They had been used by each in 
turn, against the other; and were bewildered by the 
conflicting policies of Europe, which were being fought 
out in the wilderness. 

The situation was most disastrous to both races, 
and the trouble seemed interminable to the hapless 
frontiersman. 

It was owing to the constant friction with the na- 
tives that General George Rogers Clark first came out 
with a commission from Virginia to help protect the 
border toward the Ohio River, maintaining that a 
country which was not worth defending was not 
worth claiming. It was in defence of Kentucky 
settlers that he came to the Wabash and the Mis- 
sissippi. A far more momentous result of that cam- 
paign is part of the story of the Revolution. It was to 
end the dominion of England over the wilds of Indiana. 
While the puny settlements on Western rivers were 
struggling with the primeval forces, little affected by 
the troubles of the American colonists on the Atlantic 
shore, these colonists had for three years been en- 
gaged in a life-and-death struggle for liberty from 
British rule. The strictures upon emigration to the 
new lands were part of the cause of revolt. Concen- 
tration of population to the narrow strip of country 
between the Alleghanies and the ocean was resented 
by the Southern colonies as much as unjust taxation. 
In fact the war has come to be recognized as a revolt 
against the attitude of Great Britain in regard to 
America on many questions. The colonists felt the 
genius for control of their own affairs. 



30 Historic Indiana 

It required little more than a decade, from the 
conquest of the French possessions in North America, 
for the American colonies to throw off the claims of 
Great Britain. In fact, the military part taken by the 
colonial troops in that conquest gave them the assur- 
ance to begin a protest to the crown. 

Professor Hinsdale says: 

"The history of French America is far more picturesque 
and brilliant than the history of British America in that 
period, but the English were doing work far more solid, val- 
uable, and permanent than their northern neighbors. The 
French took the lakes, rivers, and forests; they cultivated 
the Indians; their explorers were intent upon discovery; 
their traders on furs; their missionaries on souls. The 
English did not either take to the woods or cultivate the 
Indians; they loved agriculture and trade. State and 
Church, and clung to the fields, shops, politics, and churches. 
As a result, while Canada languished, thirteen English 
states grew up on the Atlantic Coast, and became popu- 
lous, rich, and strong. They spread to other colonies. 
There were 80,000 white inhabitants in New France, and 
1,160,000 in the British Colonies at the close of the 
period." 1 

During the War for Independence, the dramatic 
movements of General Clark and his Southern soldiers 
in the Northwestern wilderness were so successful, that 
the settlements on the Wabash and the Mississippi 
passed from British control before the contest was 
over on the Atlantic coast. Indiana territory became 
an American possession by these brilliant achieve- 
ments, in February, 1779, four years before England 

1 Hinsdale, Professor, The Dial, 1900. 



British Occupation 31 

gave up the hope of retaining her colonies. Al- 
though the British garrisons lingered, as late as 1796, 
under one pretext and another, they were but a sur- 
vival of the past, and scarcely received passing no- 
tice from the settlers. The wilderness had become 
American. 



CHAPTER IV 

HOW SPANISH RULE AFFECTED INDIANA 

SPANISH doubloons paid for the first Indiana 
homesteads, Spanish silver was the only coin 
of the realm on the Wabash until 1838. It 
was barter, or Spanish "pieces of eight," for twenty 
years after the territory became a State. From whence 
came this coinage and how did it become the circu- 
lating medium of Hoosierdom ? Down the Mississippi 
and its tributaries, was the outlet for the produce of 
the great valley, and back from the Gulf came pay 
in Spanish money. The free and uncontrolled navi- 
gation of the Mississippi, as the highway to the sea 
and to Europe, was of the utmost importance to all 
the adjacent territory, and became the bone of con- 
tention for two centuries, among the three great 
Powers and the colonies. In this way Indiana felt 
the dominion of Spain, and it became a part of her 
history, although the territory was never within the 
possessions of his Most Catholic Majesty. 

To appreciate the conditions in the interior along 
the Wabash, the Ohio, and all the other tributaries 
of the Mississippi River, a glance at the Spanish claims 
on this continent is necessary. De Soto had dis- 
covered the lower Mississippi River in an overland 
march from Florida, in search of gold, in 1542. He 

32 



How Spanish Rule Affected Indiana 33 

was buried in its waters — that the Indians might not 
learn that he was mortal — a hundred and forty 
years before the Frenchmen, La Salle and Tonty, 
came down the river from the Great Lakes. In ac- 
cordance with the custom of nations, De Soto's little 
band had declared possession in the name of the 
Spanish monarch, as had been done for all the southern 
shores. Ever since Columbus's discovery, ships had 
been sailing away from Spain with their prows turned 
to the southwest. They had colonized the edges of 
the shores between Mexico and Argentina before there 
was a single English settlement on the Atlantic coast. 
A^ery naturally the Spanish Government set up priority 
of claim to the lands along the Gulf. What a vision 
it must have been to the unaccustomed eyes of the 
natives of the forest 

" when through the gloomy pines there flashed the brilliant 
arms and trappings of the Spanish cavaliers and their 
soldiers, whom the Indians took to be gods. They were 
wearied and tattered with the long and fruitless search 
for strange cities and gold. Their horses were jaded and 
their men gaunt, from malaria and lack of food, but when 
they came upon this mighty river, they compared it to an 
inland sea and kneeling on the banks, the gallant De Soto 
declared it to be the possession of the Crown of Spain." ^ 

But the aim of De Soto and those who followed him 
was gold and booty; no colonies were ever founded 
in the section. A century and a half later, after La 
Salle had set up the cross of St. Louis, D 'Iberville 
founded the first fort and town on Biloxi Bay, to 
establish possession. After these tw^o dramatic in- 
cidents, the control of New Orleans and the river 
changed several times between these two nations and 

1 Fiske, John, Discovery of America, vol. I., page 68. 

3 



34 Historic Indiana 

for years to come the question was weaving like a 
shuttle, back and forth, through all the diplomacy of 
the centuries. The earliest efforts at making settle- 
ments in the entrance to the Mississippi were dis- 
couraging, but by 1 718 France had founded a per- 
manent colony at New Orleans, which proved to be 
a most loyal and persistently French settlement. 
We pass over the interesting history of how New 
Orleans lived through many changes of French rulers, 
sent out by the kings; under the Treaty of Utrecht, 
Spain had ceded all of the great territory called Louis- 
iana to France. In 1769 Spain got it all back again 
and took formal possession of the city, the river, and 
of the Louisiana territory, by virtue of a secret treaty 
with France. This compact was made seven years 
before as a recompense for Spain's loss of Florida to 
Great Britain, when she was helping France. During 
this time, in 1763, France, beaten and bankrupt, had 
finally lost to Great Britain all her dominion of Canada. 
Until 1800 the Western settlers in the Indiana ter- 
ritory, with all their trade dependent upon the river 
transportation, were at the mercy of the Spanish gov- 
ernment. The boatmen, with their boats laden with 
produce and pelts, must await the pleasure of Spanish 
customs officials. Discommoded as the river voyagers 
were, under the change of dynasty in 1769 they could 
not compare with the despondent French citizens 
of New Orleans. Ten thousand Creoles, loyal to their 
king, resented being used like pawns upon his chess- 
board, to propitiate a Power whose help he needed 
in his wars at home. Still the gay Creole population 
of the lower Mississippi submitted without combat to 
the change, but business was neglected and festivities 
suspended. The new Spanish Government hung the 



How Spanish Rule Affected Indiana 35 

most prominent French loyalists, ordered the Spanish 
language to be used, and encouraged immigration from 
Castile. Then came the sweeping proclamation of 
dire import to all the upper country, that the Mis- 
sissippi should be closed to all trade outside this prov- 
ince, prohibiting all foreigners from passing through 
Spanish territory without a passport, and any im- 
migration from the American colonies. These orders 
could only be overcome by fees and bribes, and all 
traffic became corrupt and disastrously imcertain. 
Cargoes decayed on the boats and wharves, at great 
loss to the settlers along the rivers. In time many 
of them abandoned tillage and trapping, became 
more shiftless than ever, and poverty overtook them. 
Three years later the new Governor, Unzaga, regained 
the confidence of the French at New Orleans, the 
colony increased, and agriculture was resumed. Fur- 
ther improvement came under his successor, Galvez, 
who gradually permitted more heavily laden cargoes 
to come dow^n the river, and trade revived. 

Besides the disasters to the river transportation of 
Indiana's produce, she encountered Spanish inter- 
ference in a dash of troops from the little fort at St. 
Louis, to capture Fort St. Joseph and claim occupation 
of territory. This was in 1 781, during the Revolution- 
ary War. When the claim thus set up reached the 
distant King of England he had the new American 
envoys from the colonies to checkmate the design. 
Great Britain had then lost the war, and Spain's hold 
on Indiana territory was but as the passing of a 
shadow\ 

It was during Galvez's occupancy of the governor- 
ship of Louisiana that the struggling American col- 
onies were engaged in the War of Independence. 



36 Historic Indiana 

This contest might have affected far-away Indiana 
and the other river colonists very slightly, had not 
Spain engaged in the conflict by declaring war against 
Great Britain in 1779. This move of the Powers in 
Europe ruined the commerce on the Gulf of Mexico 
by checking all shipments to Europe; consequently 
it again acted disastrously on the sorely tried settlers 
all the way to the Great Lakes. The cabals at Madrid 
meant hardships on the frontier. Hopes of perma- 
nent relief from all the vexatious hindrances to 
transportation were revived by the treaty of peace 
granting American independence, in 1783, wherein, 
it was fully stipulated that the Mississippi should 
remain forever free, from its mouth to its source, for 
navigation by all British subjects and by all citizens 
of the United States. It would seem that this should 
have settled the w^hole matter and there was an im- 
mediate response to this measure by increased im- 
migration. Industry and traffic were revived. Alas! 
Spain was slow to obey the articles of the treaty. 
Twenty years of delay and continuous vexation fol- 
lowed. They were years of diplomatic dawdhng and 
exasperating fencing, between the commissioners of 
the American Congress and the ministers of Spain. 
All this time the patience of the pioneers was tried 
beyond endurance by their losses in commerce. Prop- 
erty was seized and confiscated from Natchez on down 
the river. 

In 1793 the French Minister, Genet, tried to induce 
Kentucky and Tennessee to join his standard, in an 
invasion of Spanish territory, and rid themselves and 
the French settlers of the foreign yoke. General George 
Rogers Clark even accepted a command to accomplish 
this much desired end ; but the Federal Government 



How Spanish Rule Affected Indiana 37 

demanded the recall of Genet, and that threatened 
uprising subsided. 

At the same time another form of insidious attack 
by the Spaniards exasperated the founders of the 
young republic, struggling hard to establish a stable 
government. This was the constant intrigues, through 
a long term of years, on the part of the Spanish gov- 
ernors of Louisiana to induce the Southern and Western 
settlers to secede from the United States, and form 
an independent government west of the Alleghany 
Mountains, or join the Spanish territory. The long 
years of delay in gaining a free outlet to the sea had 
worn on the disaffected settlers. The Spanish Gov- 
ernor, Miro, incumbent at the time, and his successor 
Carondelet, sent emissaries through the South and 
through the Indiana territor>^ trying to wean the 
inhabitants from the new American government, and 
join them to the Spanish territory of Louisiana. They 
made a secret compact with the American General 
Wilkinson, who was at the same time engaged in the 
service and pay of the American Government ; making 
his treachery correspond to his influence. When the 
leading influential traders came down the river with 
their fleets, the Spanish Governor granted them ex- 
traordinary privileges, and endeavored, in every way, 
to induce them to join forces with him, and help 
annex the whole eastern valley of the Mississippi to 
the western side. From this territory they would 
create a great internal Spanish domain, reaching from 
the AUeghanies to the Rocky Mountains. This was 
during the years 1795 to 1797. 

Added to these complications, the new struggling 
Union had to contend with other foes threatening 
the continued adherence of the Western settlers. The 



38 Historic Indiana 

British, who had kept control of Canada after the 
Revolutionary War, endeavored to win the frontiers- 
men to their standard. The country along the Ohio 
Valley north and south of that river was infested with 
emissaries of these insidious and crafty schemers from 
Canada and the Louisiana territory to win the settler 
from his loyalty to the United States, but it was all 
in vain. During all this time the Spanish governors 
realized the antipathy of the French element among 
their subjects, from Vincennes to New Orleans. Es- 
pecially was this so during the French Revolution 
and the war at that time between France and Spain. 
In the metropolis on the Gulf, in the little hamlet of 
Vincennes or Fort Chartres, from the river boatmen 
poling their batteaux of produce to market down the 
river, floated the strains of the Marseillaise. In the 
streets of New Orleans the mobs bawled the Jacobin 
songs, and drank toasts to liberty and equality. In- 
cendiary letters and documents had to be suppressed 
and a Spanish alliance with the Indians was made 
for fear of an uprising of the French against the Spanish 
rule. In spite of the interdicts on foreigners coming 
into Spanish territory, in 1795, when Bosa introduced 
the culture of sugar-cane, which proved so immensely 
profitable, there was a large immigration from the 
States. 

Spain began to fear a dangerous preponderance of 
Americans in her meagre settlements. She passed 
laws restricting immigration, discriminating against 
Protestants, and denying navigation and the right 
of deposit of goods. Until the year 1800, these reg- 
ulations renewed the exasperation of the settlers, to 
the point of a threatened invasion, when the interdict 
was removed. Again trade revived, immigrants 



How Spanish Rule Affected Indiana 39 

poured in from the United States, taking up the best 
lands and starthng the Spaniards, until the king 
ordered that there should be no more grants of land 
to citizens of the United States, giving as the reason 
that it would be only a few more years until the tide 
would rise too high to be resisted. Louisiana would 
be lost to the king, lost to the Holy Pilgrims, given 
o\-er to freedom, republicanism, and error. This is 
a mere outline of the Spanish occupation of that part 
of America, which so vitally affected the early set- 
lers in Indiana territory. It has left few traces of 
its connection with the history of the State, but is 
part of the story of the past. Indiana and Illinois 
were so dependent in that far-off time, for access to 
the outside world, upon the Mississippi River, that 
its century of contest for free navigation was the 
tragedy of the frontier, second only to the dangers 
from the Indians. The infant nation on the Atlantic 
coast hardly dared assert itself against the European 
Powers who alternately held the fortunes of the 
West in their hands. As ever, right made slow progress 
against might. Added to the actual weakness of the 
American government, some of the seaboard colonies 
regarded the Mississippi Valley as an undesirable 
dependency, much as Alaska was afterwards regarded, 
so that Congress was as slow to act in behalf of the 
valley as it is slow to act in behalf of suffering Alaska 
to-day. 

During the administration of the Spanish governors, 
corruption in offfce was practised in the most unblush- 
ing way, indeed both French and Spanish officials, 
down to the close of foreign domination, were too 
far from home to pay any heed to an accounting. 
This, of course, had its effect on the city, and on the 



40 Historic Indiana 

river tradesmen; creating ver>^ lax morality. To 
New Orleans came the river boatmen from Indiana 
and the adjoining territory with their produce. This 
was where they lingered "to see the world" until 
their money was squandered. 

The more important traders and distinguished 
men from "up-the-river " also found in New Orleans 
a social circle that was attractive. The charmingly 
refined and engaging home life among the upper 
classes was most delightful after the crude life of the 
wilderness. We are reminded that throughout the 
eighty-seven years of foreign control, a steady, if 
slender, stream of the best blood of Prance and Spain 
had trickled into Louisiana. The French Revolution 
also drove many noble citizens into exile there. From 
these elements there grew to be a proud and exclusive, 
if limited, circle of citizens in this wilderness city. 
Owing to the possession of slaves, and the tropical 
climate, luxury and ease of life were most alluring 
to this class. A peculiar phase of society was gradually 
evolved from these conditions. Social circles possessed 
little learning perhaps, but the fine manners of the 
gay polite members could not be surpassed on the 
continent. French taste, speech, and customs dom- 
inated society. After years of control the Spanish 
had but one school in the city in 1795. Merchants 
and traders from the Ohio or the Wabash were fas- 
cinated with the hospitalities of the exporters with 
whom they had dealings. They brought home tales 
of the rose-embowered balconies overhanging the 
shaded streets, and the low rambling houses with 
the gay home life within; where light-hearted Creole 
hospitality made New Orleans society famous. As 
time went on many elegant house furnishings and 



How Spanish Rule Affected Indiana 41 

European importations of silver, mahogany, silks, 
laces, and satins found their way in the return loads 
up the rivers, to the homes of the settlers farther 
north. 

Finally to this Spanish-ruled French city came vague 
rumors from overseas, that the great Napoleon, who 
was now ruler in France, had ambitions to regain 
France's dominion on the Western Continent, and 
was wringing the Louisiana province from Spain. 
Such a bargain had really been made, Napoleon 
ceding Parma in exchange, at Ildefonso, October i, 
1800. But the far-off colonists were left in a state of 
expectancy, and the Spanish officials were anxious 
and uncertain, until the treaty was ratified at Madrid 
in 1 80 1. Even then the French did not come over 
to take up the government, and all was mystery in 
the colony. Napoleon had planned to advance to 
the control of the Louisiana territory from his West 
India islands, but, being at war with England, that 
government's fleet ruled the sea and prevented his 
entering into possession. Political complications on 
the continent were crowding the French Emperor. 
He dared not undertake the recovery of the American 
provinces, but he was determined he would not forfeit 
Louisiana to Great Britain. Without consulting his 
own statesmen, he suddenly opened negotiations with 
the commissioners from the United States, for the 
cession of that province to the American government. 
The American commissioners, Mr. Livingston and Mr. 
Monroe, were in Paris, interceding for free navigation 
of the Mississippi, and imploring the First Consul 
to sell their government the island of New Orleans, 
in order to insure control of the river. In the midst 
of these modest negotiations, the American gentle- 



42 Historic Indiana 

men were astounded when Napoleon proposed to them 
the sale of the whole province. This was so far be^^ond 
their instructions, and even their fondest dreams, 
that they were dumbfounded. But such a vast ac- 
quisition of territory in the heart of the continent 
being too great a prize to lose by delay, or waiting 
for power from Congress, they closed the sale forth- 
with, for sixty million francs, and the fate of the 
Mississippi navigation was settled forever. Fiske 
says of this dramatic moment that the payment of a 
few million dollars, a few strokes of the pen, a discreet 
silence until the proper moment, and then prompt 
action, secured what twenty years later could not 
have been bought with all the treasure of the nation. 
Jefferson was President at the time, but he had nothing 
to do with this purchase. In the meantime the col- 
onists in the far-off Mississippi Valley were expecting 
the French to assume control, not even being asked 
by your leave in all these transactions, w^hich so 
vitally affected their interests. In the spring, a French 
Commandant came over to New Orleans, and was 
received in state by the Spanish Governor. With 
great pomp, and surrounded by his soldiers in full 
uniform, with the whole populace crowded into the 
streets, the flag of Spain was lowered and the flag of 
France w^ent up. It was only as a matter of form 
to mark the transfer of dominion. On the following 
December 17th (1803), the French Governor Laussat 
delivered the province, in the name of France, to Gov- 
ernor Claiborne, the representative of the United 
States; and the foreign rule of Louisiana was over 
forever. 

Spain was furious when she learned that Napoleon 
had violated his pledge not to cede Louisiana to any 



How Spanish Rule Affected Indiana 43 

other Power and only her weakness prevented her 
going to war with France, but upon the great territory 
had finally been bestowed a permanent government 
with the heritage of freedom and independence. The 
traffic from the Indiana country could go down the 
rivers un vexed to the sea, and her settlers be relieved 
of Spanish interference with trade. For many decades 
Spain had possessed parts of the territory of the 
United States along the Gulf and was constantly a 
power to be reckoned with in any advance in that 
direction. Our colonial ambassadors had many times 
"cooled their heels" impatiently in the anterooms of 
the court at Madrid trying to obtain justice for the 
frontier, yet after all this history the imprint of that 
nation was soon effaced. Only along the borders 
towards Mexico are there any traces of Spanish lan- 
guage and customs. There were few architectural 
monuments left to bear record of her sway, the rem- 
nants of the population were absorbed by the later 
immigration, and only a few Spanish names are extant 
in the geography of Indiana or in the families of the 
State. 



CHAPTER V 

AMERICAN CONQUEST 

BY the time that the colonies had engaged in 
the War for Independence, Kentucky and the 
Ohio River had become the front door of the 
Northwest Territory; of which Indiana formed a part, 
and all of which was claimed by Virginia. Settlers 
from the tidewater colonies were going over the 
mountains to the fertile valleys beyond, and some of 
these pioneers were looking towards the rich lands of 
southern Indiana and Illinois. Many of these daring 
frontiersmen were of the best families in the coast 
colonies. Among the foremost of these young spirits 
must be named George Rogers Clark, whose life be- 
came so closely identified with Indiana, and whose 
career is the next phase of her history. 

Clark was only nineteen when he crossed the moun- 
tains to locate lands for himself, and at the same 
time act as surveyor for other settlers. Three years 
later he writes home, "I have engaged as a deputy 
surveyor under Captain Hancock Lee, for to lay out 
lands on ye Kentuck, for ye Ohio Company at ye rate 
of 8o;^ per year, and ye privilege of taking what land 
I want." A richer or more beautiful country had 
never been seen in America, he said. After this sur- 
veying journey Clark revisited his Virginia home, and 

44 



American Conquest 45 

in the spring of 1776 returned to Kentucky, resumed 
his residence, and soon became a leader. His bi- 
ographer, Mr. English, describes him as brave, ener- 
getic, bold, prepossessing in appearance, of pleasing 
manner, with all of the qualities, in fact, calculated 
to win a frontier people. The unorganized and chaotic 
condition of the coimtry needed such a man, and the 
man had come. In common with other Virginia 
emigrants his first object was the desire to secure 
productive lands, but those lands were of no use un- 
less the inhabitants were safe from the incursions of 
the savages. George Rogers Clark developed into a 
political and military leader; it was he who secured 
the organization of Kentucky into a county of Vir- 
ginia, and persuaded that State to furnish powder for 
the defence of this outlying possession. He had served 
in the Dunmore war, and now he organized and com- 
manded the irregular militia, for the defence of the 
meagre settlements against the savages, and did most 
effective work in their protection. At the same time, 
his alert mind grasped the situation of the whole North- 
west. The Revolutionary War was in progress, and the 
bloodthirsty raids into Kentucky by the Indians were 
prompted by the British, as well as from their own 
hatred of the settlers. The order had gone out: 

"It is the King's command that you should direct the 
Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton to assemble as many of 
the Indians of his district as he conveniently can, and 
placing a proper person at their head to conduct their 
parties, and restrain them from committing violence on 
the well-affected, inoffensive inhabitants, employ them in 
making a diversion and exciting an alarm on the frontier 
of Virginia and Pennsylvania." ^ 

> Dunn, J. P., History of Indiana, page 131, from Haldimand Coll. 



46 Historic Indiana 

To make them more docile, Hamilton made them an 
offer of a reward for the greatest number of scalps 
brought in, from the heads of Americans.^ The 
price was one pound, in British money, for the scalp 
of each woman or child, or for them as prisoners; 
three pounds for a man's scalp, but no reward for 
him as a prisoner. They paid five pounds for young 
women prisoners, and secured by this means some of 
the comeliest daughters of the frontier as their victims. 
It was to put an end to this nefarious warfare that 
Clark and his compatriots enlisted. They were well 
aware that they had to face the combined forces of 
the British at the military posts and their savage 
allies. There is no reason to think that these men 
did not have visions of securing territory from the 
British, as well as stopping the Indian forays on their 
settlements. Certainly Clark moved directly forward 
along this line. He felt that with a few valiant men 
he could accomplish much more for the government 
than to join the army in the East. Nothing but ex- 
pedition and secrecy could give success to the enter- 
prise. Mr. Clark went to Virginia, took the Gov- 
ernor, Patrick Henry, and Jefferson, Wyeth, and Mason 
into his confidence, and secured the necessary au- 
thority to raise troops, a fund of 1200 pounds in 
money, and promises of land grants to the troops if 
successful. 

Clark had left Kentucky in October. By the fol- 
lowing January, 1778, he had secured his authority 
and instructions, appointed his officers in Kentucky 
to enlist men, enrolled a little handful of 150 men in 
Virginia, and returned down the Ohio before six 
months had elapsed. In Kentucky the frontier re- 

> Cockrum, Wm. M., A Pioneer History of Indiana, page 26. 



American Conquest 47 

emits joined him. All were volunteers, clad in buck- 
skin, and armed with their own flint-lock rifles and 
tomahawks. Oflicers and men were guiltless of uni- 
form or badge. Loyalty to their leader, and hatred 
of Indians, was the bond which held them together 
and spurred them forward toward danger. By the 
last of May the little band of soldiers and followers 
dropped down the river to the falls of the Ohio, and 
encamped on Com Island. Here they left their fami- 
lies and a guard, having only one hundred and seventy- 
five men to accomplish the great undertaking which 
they had in hand. Clark moved quickly forward on 
his desperate enterprise. In his account of this very 
dramatic journey in his own memoir, he says: "One 
bright June morning in 1778 our forces embarked 
in the boats prepared to transport them down the 
river. We left the little island, ran about a mile up 
the river in order to gain the main channel ; and shot 
the Falls at the very moment of the sun being under 
a great eclipse, which caused various apprehensions 
among the superstitious. As I knew that British spies 
were kept on the river, below the town of the Illinois, 
I had resolved to march part of the way by land."^ 
Running the boats four days and nights, with relays 
of oarsmen, they landed three leagues below the mouth 
of the Tennessee, ran up into a small creek, and rested 
over-night. Not having enough men to leave a guard, 
they impressed some hunters, who came along the 
river from Kaskaskia, into their service as guides, 
and started across the Illinois country to that post, 
one hundred and twenty miles, through swamp and 
wilderness. Clark's warriors had no wagons, pack 

> Extract from Memoirs of Gen. Geo. Rogers Clark, to the 
Governor of Virginia. Dillon, page 12 1. 



48 Historic Indiana 

horses, or other means of conveyance for their muni- 
tions of war or baggage. 

Continuing Clark's own report of the campaign to 
the Governor of Virginia, we read ^ : 

" On the evening of the Fourth of July we got within three 
miles of the town of Kaskaskia, having a river of the same 
name to cross before we could reach the town. After 
making ourselves ready for anything that might happen, 
we marched after night to a farm that was on the same 
side of the river, about a mile above the town, took the 
family prisoners, and found plenty of boats to cross in, 
and in two hours transported ourselves to the other shore 
with the greatest silence. I immediately divided my 
little army into two divisions, ordered one to surround 
the town, with the other I broke into the fort, secured 
the governor, Mr. Rochblave, in his bed, in fifteen minutes 
had every street blocked. Sent runners through the 
town ordering the people on pain of death to keep to their 
houses, which they observed, and before daylight had 
the whole town disarmed. Thus were the British dis- 
possessed forever of this important military post, and of 
the old historic town of Kaskaskia, about which lingered 
so much romantic interest." 

Bowman, one of the commanders, says that Roche- 
blave, the British commandant, was made prisoner, 
with all his instructions received from time to time, 
from the several governors at Quebec, to set the In- 
dians upon the Americans with great rewards for our 
scalps. 

This is the simple recital of the night surprise and 
bloodless capture of the post, as told by the comman- 
ders. One historian says that Clark had no cannon 
or means of assaulting the fort, and therefore must 

' Extract from Memoirs of Gen. Geo. Rogers Clark, to the Gov- 
ernor of Virginia. Dillon, page 124. 



American Conquest 49 

use stratagem. One of his aids and a small detach- 
ment of men entered the fort, and found an American 
within who conducted them to the very bedchamber 
of the sleeping governor. The first notice that Roche- 
blave had that he was a prisoner was Simon Kenton 
tapping him on the shoulder to awaken him. Later 
the commandant was sent to Virginia and his goods 
confiscated. Another pretty story has always been 
told of this night; that there was a ball being given 
by the officers of the fort, and that the gay Creoles, 
both men and girls, were surprised at the dance, when 
Clark and his men looked in on them. He had placed 
his men on guard, secured the exits, and was calmly 
leaning against the doorpost, looking at the dancers, 
when an Indian lying on the floor of the entry, looking 
up, saw a new pale face and sprang to his feet with 
the war-whoop. As the dancers rushed towards the 
door they encountered the commander, but Clark, 
standing unmoved and with unchanging face, grimly 
bade them continue their dancing, but to remember 
that they now danced under the flag of Virginia and 
not Great Britain. The story is so like the life at the 
French posts and the cool composure of Colonel Clark, 
that it is welcome as a reflection of the life and the 
persons concerned, whether true or not. 

The fort, inmates, and stores secured, Clark sent 
a messenger back to Corn Island to give the good 
news of a bloodless conquest to those left behind. 
He then addressed himself to allaying the fears of the 
inhabitants of the post. The French inhabitants 
fully expected to be at least exiled from their for- 
est homes, and begged, through their good priest, 
only not to have their families separated, and to be 
allowed to take with them some pro\asions and 



so Historic Indiana 

clothing. To this Colonel Clark says that he replied 
vigorously : 

"Do you mistake us for savages? My countrymen dis- 
dain to make war on helpless innocents. It was to prevent 
the horrors of Indian butchery upon our wives and chil- 
dren that we have taken arms and penetrated this remote 
stronghold of British and Indian barbarity; and not the 
despicable prospect of plunder. I further told them that 
the King of France had united his powerful arms with 
those of the Americans. . . , That their religion would 
not be a source of disagreement, as all religions were 
regarded with equal respect by American laws. And 
now to prove my sincerity you will inform your fellow- 
citizens that they are at liberty to conduct themselves 
as usual without the least apprehension. . . . Your 
friends who are in confinement shall be immediately 
released."^ 

He soon made friends and allies of the impression- 
able French and easily attached them to his standard, 
as they vv^ere never in sympathy with their British 
rulers. Meantime Colonel Clark's assistant, Captain 
Bowman, with a detachment of thirty mounted men, 
was sent immediately up the Mississippi River the 
very night of Fort Kaskaskia's capture to surprise and 
take possession of ihe three other little towns, Prairie 
de Roche, St. Phillips, and Cahokia. Weary as they 
were, these determined patriots, without sleep for 
three more nights, secretly and swiftly marched to, 
and seized all the hamlets; and within ten days ad- 
ministered the oath of allegiance to three hundred 
inhabitants of those towns, where Captain Bowman 
remained to retain possession. 

» Memoirs from the copy in William H. English's Conquest of 
the Northwest, page 480. Indianapolis, 1896. 



American Conquest 51 

Although the British claimed dominion at this 
time, all the inhabitants of the posts, were still French 
and their dislike of English rule greatly facilitated 
Clark's taking peaceful possession. Bowman says 
that as the towns of white people in the Illinois country 
east of the Wabash had now been secured Clark was 
looking with great anxiety to securing Post Vincennes, 
on the east bank of that river, which he regarded 
as the most important of all. Father Gibault, the 
beloved and honored priest of the district, who had 
labored with his little flock for twenty years, was ap- 
proached by Colonel Clark with overtures to conduct 
a peaceable occupation of Vincennes, He knew that 
the English Governor Abbott had left Vincennes a 
short time before, leaving the fort and town virtually 
in the possession of the French settlers. The priest 
offered to try to secure the feality of the post with- 
out a conflict; especially, as he could carry them the 
news of the new American alliance with France. Ten 
days after Major Clark's occupancy of Kaskaskia 
Father Gibault, a French gentleman named Lafont, 
and a retinue provided by Clark, which included one 
of his spies to insure fair play to the American forces, 
made the journey across the prairies of Illinois to the 
Wabash River, and accomplished the conciliation of 
the inhabitants of the post at Vincennes. They ad- 
ministered the oath of allegiance in the little log chapel, 
raised an American flag for the first time on Indiana 
territory, garrisoned the fort, and returned to Colonel 
Clark with the joyful news of the peaceful occupation, 
by the first of August! Every plan had worked out 
with amazing success. A bold commander with his 
handful of men, and a peace-loving missionary, had won 
an area fit for an empire. Captain Helm was placed 



52 Historic Indiana 

in command at Vincennes. By securing the sworn 
allegiance of "Tobacco's son — ^The Grand Door of the 
Wabash," a Piankeshaw chief who ruled the tribes 
along the river, he soon extended the same amicable 
relations to the Indian towns up the Wabash, as far 
as the Post Ouiatanon. The whole campaign so far 
had been a bloodless conquest. 

After the British posts w^ere thus secured, and the 
French habitants so peacefully reconciled to American 
control. Colonel Clark spent all his energies on making 
treaties w4th the surrounding Indians, who had been 
allied with the British. He showed great tact and 
sagacity as well as a consummate knowledge of the 
Indian nature in these negotiations. 

When the marvellous news of the peaceful oc- 
cupation of all the w^estern posts reached Virginia, 
it created the wildest enthusiasm. The Governor 
communicated the tidings to the members of the Con- 
tinental Congress, and planned to accede to Colonel 
Clark's urgent appeals for help, by sending new troops 
to the far off wilderness forts. 

Two months later the British governor, Hamilton 
of Detroit, learning that the "American Rebels" had 
captured the Western outposts, enlisted the services of 
the Indians in his cause, and with a force of five hun- 
dred men of both races, four hundred of whom were sav- 
ages, came across Lake Erie and down the Wabash, 
on the six-hundred-mile journey, to recapture the lost 
posts. As the fort at Vincennes was so miserably 
weak, and manned by the French habitants, with 
only two x^mericans, it was obliged to capitulate on 
the 15th of December, 1778. But Hamilton did not 
pursue his advantage and push on to Kaskaskia, as 
the indomitable Clark would have done with such 



American Conquest 53 

a force. He contented himself with sending Indian 
forces to the Ohio River to intercept any troops that 
might be sent to Clark's relief. By intercepting all 
messengers, Hamilton prevented Colonel Clark from re- 
ceiving any word of the recapture of Port Vincennes 
by the British until January, when some of the 
Vincennes men deserted and crossed to Clark's post at 
Kaskaskia. Later, Colonel Vigo, a Spanish merchant 
travelling from Vincennes, gave Clark all the details 
of the strength of the post, and the news that Ham- 
ilton had gone back to Detroit to prepare for a spring 
campaign. He intended to recover the whole country 
from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi River. Of 
course, the little bands on the Mississippi were dis- 
tressed at the recapture by the British of Fort Vin- 
cennes, and immediately set about preparations for 
what proved to be the most spectacular relief expe- 
dition in the history of border wars. 

Clark's records state that on the first of February 
men were put to work building a large boat, called 
a galley or bateau. This boat was to take army 
supplies and a detachment of troops down the Kas- 
kaskia and Mississippi, and up the Ohio and Wabash 
to a designated point below Vincennes, probably 
the mouth of White River, there to await further 
orders. The vessel was put in condition for use in 
a few days, and loaded with two four-pound cannon, 
four swivels, ammunition, provisions, and other army 
supplies. Nothing equal to this craft had ever been 
seen at Kaskaskia before, and this added to the already 
intense military excitement. On the fourth of Feb- 
ruary, The Willing, which was the name given the 
boat, dropped down the river, amid the cheers of the 
forty-six men on board, and the applause of four or 



54 Historic Indiana 

five companies of soldiers on shore, and most of the 
men, women, and children of Kaskaskia. After the 
boat had left on its circuitous water route to Vin- 
cennes, the balance of the little force of soldiers, num- 
bering less than two hundred in all, started on foot 
across the country. 

It was one hundred and sixty miles to the point 
where they were to join those who had gone by boat. 
The troops going overland had some pack-horses, 
but no tents, and the whole of this remarkable cam- 
paign was made in the worst possible February 
w^eather. It rained constantly, and the men were 
without shelter, or any suitable place to cook or rest. 
The journals left by the commander and his aide give 
a most graphic picture of the mid-winter journey. They 
tell of the constant rain, and the submerged country 
which only the early settlers, who have seen the Wa- 
bash out of its banks, can realize. He says that, after 
receiving a lecture and absolution from the priest, 
they crossed the Kaskaskia River with one himdred 
and seventy men. For a week, they marched over 
plains covered with water, and encountered incredible 
difficulties, until they came to the Little Wabash, 
which was swollen to an expanse of five miles. "I 
viewed this sheet of water," says Clark, "with dis- 
trust, but immediately set to work, without holding 
any consultation or suffering any suggestions, and 
ordered a pirogue to be built immediately." ^ In a 
day it was finished and the baggage and the men 
ferried over the stream. The horses swam across and 
were reladened. For seven more days it was their 
lot to march through water, which in many places 
was three and four feet deep, or was still deeper where 

1 Extract from Memoirs. 



American Conquest 55 

they had to swim. The country was so drowned that 
no game was obtainable. The men were famished 
for food and growing weak and miserable. Stopping 
on a rise in the ground to rest, they made a rude canoe 
and sent men out in it to steal boats from the shores. 
The French volunteers w^anted to return to Kaskaskia, 
and the boats were full of the sick and exhausted. 
Many times the indomitable Clark resorted to solemn 
or frivolous expedients to hearten his men and urge 
them on. Once when the water was appallingly deep 
and swift he set the little Irish drummer on the shoul- 
ders of a good-natured six-foot Virginian sergeant, 
and ordered an advance, with the drummer beating 
the charge from his lofty perch, while Clark, sword 
in hand, gave the command to forward march. Elated 
and amused the men followed and, holding their rifles 
above their heads, they reached the dry land. A 
canoe of Indian squaws coming up to town was dis- 
covered. The men gave chase, took the canoe, on 
board of which, it is told, was near half a quarter of 
buffalo, some com, tallow, kettles, etc. This was a 
grand prize. Broth was immediately made and served 
out to the weakly with care. 

Plodding along through further swamps and swollen 
streams, after eighteen days of this dreary, cold, dis- 
heartening, dangerous marching, they finally reached 
a spot of high ground overlooking the post. 

"Our situation was now critical [writes Clark]. No 
possibility of retreat in case of defeat, and six hun- 
dred men in the fort. Our crew on the galley would 
now have been a re-enforcement of immense magnitude, 
but it had not come. The idea of being made prisoners 
was foreign to almost every man, as they expected torture 



56 Historic Indiana 

at the hands of savage alHes, if they fell into their hands. 
Nothing but the most daring conduct would insure success."^ 

Colonel Clark now rapidly made his preparations for 
the assault. He wrote and sent by a Frenchman , whom 
they had captured out hunting, a friendly proclama- 
tion to the French habitants, telling them that he 
was going to attack w4th a large force and warning 
them to stay in their houses on pain of death. Then 
with flying banners and many evolutions on the edge 
of the forest he deceived the villagers with the idea 
of great numbers of troops, and they gave no warning 
to the soldiers within the post. As dark came on, 
he divided his little troop and silently advanced. One 
detachment surrounded the little French town ; the 
other swiftly advanced on the fort, completely sur- 
prising the garrison by a deadly rifle attack from 
behind trees, palings, and huts. So keen and deadly 
was the marksmanship of the concealed Americans 
that in a little while no Britisher dared man the cannon 
in the blockhouses. By morning the tide of battle 
was in their favor, and they stopped long enough to 
eat the first breakfast they had had in a week. Clark 
sent a vigorous and intimidating invitation to the 
fort to surrender, but it was declined by Hamilton 
and the fight was resumed. "These frontiersmen 
were at that time the best marksmen known to the 
world, and at these distances, from sixty to one hun- 
dred yards, a silver dollar was as large a target as they 
cared for." 2 Whenever a figure appeared at a port- 
hole, there was one less defender within the fort. 
Naturally the British became discouraged, and a truce 
was asked for. After a parley between the officers, 

» Extract from Memoirs. 

2 Dunn, J. P., History of Indiana, page 146. 



American Conquest 57 

Clark modified his terms of an unconditional surrender, 
and required that they surrender as prisoners of war 
with all stores and supplies. 

The fort capitulated ; the little army of frontiersmen 
had conquered with the wounding of only one man. 
The weary march and unequal task had ended in 
extinguishing the claim of British dominion on the 
Wabash. On February 25, 1779, the American flag 
floated over the post; and two days afterward The 
Willing, ladened with the other troops, arrived. They 
were too late for the storming of the fort, but in good 
flghting trim for the very exciting seizure, two days 
later, of the British re-enforcements coming down 
the river from Detroit. This picturesque encoimter 
of the British fleet of canoes, filled with red-coated 
soldiers and their naked savage allies, surprised at a 
bend of the wilderness stream by the hardy band of 
Kentucky pioneers, clad in buckskin and armed with 
their own keen rifles, was a dramatic scene that has 
never been surpassed on the Wabash. The surprise was 
complete, and when the British surrendered it meant 
that they gave up the whole vast interior of the United 
States. It was Colonel Clark's great desire to push on 
and capture Detroit, and perhaps secure Canada; but 
his own handful of troops were worn out, and con- 
gressional scrip, wherewith troops were paid, was held 
at half its face value. No re-enforcements were sup- 
plied from the East, and the expedition, greatly to 
his sorrow, was never resumed. Had he been allowed 
to gain possession of Canada, the United States could 
have held it when peace came. 

There was great rejoicing in Virginia and all of the 
Eastern colonies when the news finally travelled over 
the mountains that the Western outposts were in the 



S8 Historic Indiana 

hands of the American forces. The results of this 
campaign were far-reaching in the settlement with 
Great Britain four years later, when the final treaty 
of peace was ratified. As a consequence, all the ter- 
ritory between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes be- 
came United States possession. In his desolate old age 
General Clark said, "I have given the United States 
half of the territory they possess, and they suffer me 
to remain in poverty." 

Colonel Clark returned to the Falls of the Ohio at the 
close of the victorious summer of 1779, where he after- 
wards founded the present city of Louisville. Until 
the close of the war with England he and his volunteers 
were hard pressed, protecting the frontier from the 
savages, who were still incited by the British to make 
raids on the inhabitants. After that war was over, 
he was for years at the head of the territorial forces 
who were still called out to contend in bitter warfare 
against the Indians. Indeed it was a trying time on 
the frontier. It is known that during the period be- 
tween the close of the War of the Revolution and the 
War of 1 81 2, more than two thousand men, women, 
and children were carried into captivity from Ken- 
tucky and the Northwest Territory! To all these 
heartrending separations, and terrors that dire dis- 
asters were surely being visited upon the loved ones 
thus rudely torn from their famiHes, there was the 
added sorrow of uncertainty, for only a tithe of the 
captured ones w^ere ever heard of afterw^ard by their 
families. Many of those who were carried off were 
burned at the stake, after being scalped, while the 
savages gleefully danced around the slow fire. All 
of the historians concede that there was no more 
valuable service rendered to the nation, in the War 



American Conquests 59 

for Independence, than that of these knights of the 
frontier and their commander. Winsor says that the 
conquest not only dispossessed England but ruled 
out the pretensions of Spain and France, who claimed 
all of the territory from Louisiana to Quebec. "Actual 
present possession prevailed," says Mr. English, "when 
the boimdaries were finally established. . . . But 
for General Clark's services, and certainly that of his 
little band of soldiers, the boundary of the States in 
the Northwest might have been the crest of the 
AUeghanies." 

Indiana's historian, Mr. Dunn, pays fitting personal 
tribute to General Clark when he says: "Of all those 
who preceded or followed him, La Salle is the only one 
who can be compared to him in the wonderful com- 
binations of genius, activity, and courage that lifted 
him above his fellows." ^ 

Professor Hinsdale gives recognition of the impor- 
tance of the acquisition of this great territory of which 
Indiana forms a part: "Next to the planting of English 
civilization on the Atlantic slope in the first part of 
the seventeenth century, the planting of American 
civilization in the Great West in the second part of 
the eighteenth century is the most impressive event 
in our history." 2 

' Dunn, J. P., History of Indiana, page 176. 
2 Hinsdale, Professor, The Dial, 1900. 



CHAPTER VI 



THE PIONEERS 



WHEN the very earliest adventurers travelled 
westward from the Atlantic colonies in the 
quest for knowledge of the great unknown 
country, the Indians sent a "speaking bark" from tribe 
to tribe, passing the word westward, that a new race 
of pale-faces, neither French nor Spanish, was making 
its appearance on the western slopes of the Alleghanies. 
After General Clark and his company of southern 
pioneers had wrested the west from the British, many 
of his little band of soldiers returned to the Territory, 
and took up lands, which later were granted them 
by the government for their services. Following them 
down the Ohio, or on up the Wabash, came others 
from the South. These men selected homesteads 
along those rivers, or their tributaries, wherever there 
was a sightly spot that could be reached by water 
transportation. 

This process was not rapid. In 1787, there were 
only four hundred Americans within the borders of 
what is now the State of Indiana. The lands were 
not ceded by treaty, until 1804. But every little while 
a quaint fiatboat would come floating down from 
Fort Pitt, or be poled over from the Kentucky shore, 
and land a family, with its handful of household goods 

60 



The Pioneers 6i 

and bare necessities of life, on the banks. Then they 
would walk, until they found a site that answered their 
purpose, and another home in the wilderness would be 
begun. The French settlers had always clustered 
around the military posts, but each pioneer of English 
speech built his solitary cabin on his own homestead, 
in the forest. 

Knowing all that they afterwards passed through, 
it impresses us as a pathetic picture, this, of the primi- 
tive craft, drifting down the wilderness rivers, ladened 
to the water's edge with their nondescript freight and 
their groups of courageous humanity. They were ex- 
posed at any turn in the stream, to the danger of the 
merciless arrows of savages in ambush, or pursuing 
canoe. If the newcomers journeyed overland, and 
most of these walked the entire way, the road was 
even more perilous. A pioneer said that he knew of 
few forms of exertion that so thoroughly tested the 
mettle of men, as journeying across the wilderness. 
There was nowhere visible the slightest sign that 
others, had ever preceded them, it was all an unbroken 
virgin forest. The trees were veritable monarchs of 
the ages. The wind moaned through them; and their 
dead leaves, of the years before, rustled uncannily 
under the tread, as they went on and on. Or, warned 
by native guides, they descended into dark and gloomy 
ravines, dank with decaying vegetation, to escape the 
observation of a passing band of savages. It was 
surely no holiday jaunt. Only the brave started, 
and only the brave and strong got through. When a 
newly married couple, or a family, had decided to 
go to the frontier, their departure meant a long fare- 
well and occasioned many heartaches. As the time 
really arrived, and the dear ones were to leave, the 



62 Historic Indiana 

kinsfolk and neighbors assembled, prayers were said, 
and hymns sung, such as: 

" When shall we meet again. 
Meet ne'er to sever? " 

Then heart-rending good-byes were said, and the 
wagon creaked off over the trail toward the west. 
Doctor Ezra Ferris, minister of the Duck Creek Church, 
has left a graphic account of the journey of his father's 
family from New England. He says: 

"A short time before my father started on his journey 
to the west, and after he had determined to do so, a ser- 
mon was preached at his home on the occasion, from Gene- 
sis xii., i: "Now the Lord said unto Abraham, Get thee 
out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy 
father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee." On 
the twentieth of September, 1789, according to previous 
arrangement, my father left his native village (Stanwick, 
Conn.) ; and separated himself and family from all the 
associations and endearing ties which had been formed 
during a life of fifty years, to seek for himself and them 
a home in the western wilderness. Though I was a boy 
of only six years of age, I have a very distinct and vivid 
recollection of the affecting occasion. The enterprise at 
that time was so novel and daring, it drew together a 
vast crowd of people to witness the parting scene. Some 
feared we would fall a sacrifice to savage cruelty; others 
predicted that we would all be drow^ned in descending the 
western rivers. We went down the road on the north 
side of Long Island Sound to the City of New York. Thence 
we passed over into New Jersey, travelled through that 
State and Pennsylvania, over the mountains, down the 
Youghiogheny, thence down the Monongahela to Pittsburg, 
thence down the Ohio to Fort Miami, at which our family 
arrived two months and twenty days after starting on the 




A Typical Pioneer Scene. 

Redrawn by Marie Goth from an old print. 



The Pioneers 63 

journey. In approaching the shore we were met by a 
crowd of smiHng faces, to bid us a hearty welcome, and 
offer us all the assistance circumstances would admit of. 
An apartment in the fort (of about sixteen feet square) 
was assigned each family, in which for a time they resided. 
There were about thirty or more families. Rest was only 
temporary. Much was to be done to provide for coming 
wants, and that too in the face of danger. The difficulties 
were, however, all overcome; who dares to prescribe 
bounds to what human industry and enterprise may 
accomplish."^ 

This was a typical journey from the south and east, 
to the Wabash country. They camped under the stars 
when night shut down, and often wolves howled 
about them. Well-to-do families, coming over the 
mountains from Virginia and Carolina, moved all 
of their household goods on pack-horses ; even bedsteads 
and bureaus were thus transported. Occasionally 
a settler would bring out a cow, which must also walk 
all the way by the wagon side ; as at least one maiden 
did from Carolina, who was too energetic to be content 
in the slow-moving wain. 

Many little bands were surprised by skulking 
savages, and murdered or scalped by their own camp- 
fires. 

The forest through which they journeyed afforded 
them plenty of game, and beautiful fish were caught 
in the streams. In the fall, wild turkey, ducks, 
and pigeons swarmed in the sky. As the emigrants 
went, they "blazed" their way by chopping the bark 
from one side of the trees to guide their return, or 
mark the way for any one who should come after 
them. Upon reaching a desirable location, the new 

1 From an old letter. 



64 Historic Indiana 

settlers camped out until they felled trees for a cabin 
home. 

With the help of neighbors, the logs were laid up, 
notched, and saddled; hand-riven clap-boards were 
laid on for the roof, and fastened down by weight poles 
and wooden pegs, never a piece of iron to be had for 
construction. Nails and hardware were entirely lack- 
ing on the frontier. The great fireplaces, five to eight 
feet wide, and the "cat and clay" chimney were built 
of stones or sticks, and plastered with clay, and a 
wide clay hearth was made. The door was rived out 
of logs, by hand, and battened together with similar 
boards. This strong barricade was then hung on 
wooden hinges, and fastened by a heavy wooden latch, 
which was lifted from the outside by a leather thong 
made of buffalo or deer hide. This was the latch- 
string which proverbially hung out, as a token of 
welcome, and was pulled to the inside only at night, 
or when Indians were lurking about. At such times 
the strong door served as a real protection from the 
invaders. 

A puncheon floor was hewed and laid, and the 
shelter considered complete. Later the chinks be- 
tween the logs would be filled up before winter set 
in, and when it was safe from Indians the window 
openings were cut in the logs and they were " glazed " 
with greased paper or deer hide. Some of the log 
taverns and homes were built two stories high, but 
this was unusual. The rustic logs often put forth 
leaves, and the outside of the cabin would be 
covered with green, making a fine screen from the 
Indians. 

John Finley, a pioneer poet, in terms as old-fash- 
ioned as his theme, is always quoted as giving in his 




The Spinning-wheel was the Stringed Instrument of the Household. 



The Pioneers 65 

Booster Nest the most vivid description of the sur- 
roundings of the "squatter" on new lands: 

"The emigrant is soon located — 
In Hoosier life initiated — 
Erects a cabin in the woods, 
Wherein he stores his household goods. 
Ensconced in this, let those who can 
Find out a truly happier man. 
The little youngsters rise around him, 
So numerous that they quite astound him. 
I 'm told, in riding somewhere west, 
A stranger found a Hoosier's nest, 
And fearing he might be benighted 
He 'hailed the house,' and then alighted. 

The Hoosier met him at the door, 
The salutations soon were o'er; 
He took the stranger's horse aside 
And to a sturdy sapling tied. 
Then having stripped the saddle off. 
He fed him in a sugar trough. 

The stranger stooped to enter in 
The entrance, closing with a pin. 
And manifested strong desire 
To seat him by the log-heap fire. 



Invited shortly to partake 
Of venison, milk, and johnny-cake, 
The stranger made a hearty meal. 
And glances round the room would steal. 
One side was lined with divers garments, 
The other spread with skins of varmints; 
Dried pumpkins overhead were strung, 
Where venison hams in plenty hung; 



5 



66 Historic Indiana 

Two rifles placed above the door, 
Three dogs lay stretched upon the floor. 
In short, the domicile was rife 
With specimens of Hoosier life. 



Erelong the cabin disappears, 

A spacious mansion next he rears; 

His fields seem widening by stealth, 

An index of increasing wealth; 

And when the hives of Hoosiers swarm, 

To each is given a noble farm. ^ 

In this crude fashion the best of the settlers were 
obliged to begin life in the wilderness, for the distances 
were so great, and means of transportation so primitive 
and slow, that no one brought much with him. 

There was, at an early period of the settlements, an 
inferior kind of land title, which was known as a 
tomahawk right. This claim was designated by dead- 
ening a few trees near the head of a spring, and marking 
the bark of some of the trees on the boundaries with 
the initials of the person who thus set up a claim to the 
tract. Sometimes these rights had to be verified, or 
paid for, if they were very desirable; but it is certain 
that they were bought and sold, for a long time. The 
entry price of regular government land was generally 
$1.25 per acre. 

Some of the early settlers came over the mountains 
in the spring, and raised a crop of corn, leaving their 
families at home until a crop was assured. An old 
pioneer used to tell how his father had brought his 
wife and children with him when he first came, and 
the corn-meal gave out six weeks before a new crop 

' Indianapolis Jottrnal, Carriers' Address, 1833. 



The Pioneers 67 

was ripe. For that length of time they had to live 
without bread. The grown people told the children 
to call lean venison and the breast of the wild turkeys 
bread ; the flesh of the bear was called meat. Alas ! 
this artifice, he says, did not deceive the stomach; 
and for some time they were sickly, being tormented 
with a sense of hunger. The little ones watched the 
growth of the potato tops, pumpkins, and corn. They 
recall to this day the delicious taste of the roasted 
potatoes; and later the young corn, when they were 
permitted to pull the new ears. When the corn was 
hard enough to grate for johnny-cakes, they became 
healthy, vigorous, and contented. As soon as possible 
the settlers brought cattle and swine from the older 
settlements, either driving overland or floating down 
the river on flatboats. The live stock contributed 
greatly to their comfort. 

There were few household implements, or farm tools, 
in any cabin home. The shovel plow was the only 
cultivator. The mortar, in which they pounded the 
corn into hominy, was made by burning out a hollow 
in a near-by stump. The corn, for meal bread, was 
crushed between two flat stones, under a weight. 
When the corn was still green, they grated and dried the 
pulp to use for hoe-cake. The trenchers and bowls 
for kitchen use were hewn from sections of maple logs, 
and then burned and scraped smooth. Long-handled 
gourds, of every shape and size, were raised and dried 
for dippers and drinking cups. Never a cool sparkling 
spring or cider barrel but had the useful gourd hanging 
by it. Many of the poorer immigrants, who had walked 
all of the way from their old homes, had but a single 
skillet in their cabin. Often they made pots of day, 
with their own hands, that served until they could have 



68 Historic Indiana 

iron ones. In the more comfortable homes, the cooking 
was done in iron kettles, hung from a crane, which 
had been built into the walls of the capacious fireplace. 
The baking was done in a covered skillet called a "spi- 
der." This utensil stood upon feet and was heated 
on the hearth with hickory coals piled under and over 
it ; no flame was suffered to blaze around the baker. 

The apples that were roasted before the fire, and 
the potatoes and corn which were "roasted in their 
jackets" in the ashes, had a flavor fit for an epicure. 
The hoe-cake or johnny-cake was baked on a smooth 
board, in front of the fire, and there the meat was roasted 
on a spit or broiled on the coals. When a family be- 
came prosperous, they would have a Dutch oven built 
of bricks, or of clay and boulders. In shape these 
were long mound-like affairs, and sometimes had great 
caldrons set in the top, for making apple butter or 
rendering lard. Fire was built in this oven, and when 
it was thoroughly heated, the fire was scraped out, 
the space was swept and garnished, and the rows of 
bread and pies were put in to bake. There were few 
cook-stoves, or stoves of any kind, within the State 
before 1825 to 1830. The furniture of the cabins was 
all made of riven logs, put together with wooden pins. 
The bedsteads were made by driving posts in the floor 
and pegs into the walls ; from these, cords or straps of 
deer hide were drawn, over and across, in place of 
springs. This network held the pine boughs and 
afterwards the great feather beds, which were the pride 
of every housekeeper's heart. Many of the children 
born on the frontier were rocked in a poplar trough, 
such as were made for use in sugar camps, and used as 
a cradle. Lamps were modelled of clay, in the form 
of cups, fastened on a plate. These were filled with 




The Heroism of the Pioneer Women. 

From an old print. 



The Pioneers 69 

bear's-grease, and the wick was made from cotton raised 
in the door-yard. 

A few dishes of pewter-ware brought from home, and 
some hickory chairs with spHnt bottoms, were possessed 
by the more luxurious families, but all had stools and 
benches, rived out of logs, to sit at table. Every 
household had its rude loom, and spinning-wheels. 
Every woman was a weaver, and each householder 
tanned his own leather, moulded his own bullets, and 
fashioned his own axe-handles. The dress of the 
frontier was home-made from centre to circumference. 
The hunting shirt, breeches, and leggins were made of 
buckskin, ornamented with fringe of the same. The 
moccasins were made of the same material, or of the 
heavier buffalo hide. This foot covering was always 
made by the people themselves, and was often orna- 
mented with beads in the Indian fashion. In winter 
the hair of rabbits, squirrels, or deer was placed inside 
the shoe, for warmth. Buckskin was chosen for 
clothing, not only because it was available, but because 
it resisted nettles, briars, the bites of the rattlesnake, 
and was, as an outside garment, an excellent pro- 
tection against the cold. Even deerskin had its draw- 
backs and discomforts, for when it was wet, as must 
often be the case, the garment would draw up a third 
of its size, and become stiff and unwieldy. As soon 
as they could protect a flock of sheep from the wolves, 
the pioneer had woollen clothing as well. The women 
made their own soap, moulded their own candles, 
cured the meats, churned the butter, as soon as they 
had cows, and wove all of the garments worn by the 
whole household. They wove linsey-woolsey — the 
warp of flax and the woof of wool — for winter garments, 
and tow-linen for summer. The raising of flax was 



70 Historic Indiana 

one of the earliest industries in Indiana. Cotton-seed 
was brought from the South, by the CaroHna women, 
but it would not reach the perfection that it attained 
in the warmer States. The women spun both wool 
and cotton yarn for knitting the stockings of the whole 
household — a task which was eternally in evidence. 
No one could sit down and hold their hands in that 
time. 'Coonskin caps and buffalo overcoats formed 
the outer covering for the men. The women wore 
shawls, of their own weaving, and the head was 
covered with a thick quilted hood in winter, and a sun- 
bonnet in summer. This was universal. When a 
young girl was married, she put on caps, and henceforth 
her tresses were covered. All wore mittens made of 
squirrel or beaver skins, tanned by themselves and 
stitched by the women of the family. 

Horse mills were set up in crudest fashion, as soon 
as wheat was raised ; but as early as possible, in every 
neighborhood where there was available water-power, 
one of the settlers would build a dam, and start a mill, 
either for manufacturing woollens, or grinding grain, 
or both. The people rode from ten to thirty miles 
to these mills, and often had to wait three or four days 
and nights for their grist. The grain was brought in 
bags on horseback and the boys or men camped about 
the mill, visiting, playing games, and telling stories 
until their turn came. The miller took "toll" for his 
work, generally at the rate of one fourth of the grain 
ground, and every man had to bolt his own flour 
from the chaff'. From that fact you could always 
tell when a man had been to mill. In An Old Settler's 
Story Riley gives us a graphic picture of going to mill : 

"The Settlement wasn't nothing but a baby in them days, 
fer I mind 'at old Ezry Sturgiss had jist got his saw and 



The Pioneers 71 

griss-miliin' agoin', and Bills had come along and claimed 
to know all about millin', and got a job with him; and 
millers in them times was wanted worse 'n congressmen, 
and reckon got better wages; fer afore Ezry built, ther 
was n't a dust o' meal er flour to be had short o' the White 
Water, better'n sixty mild from here, the way we had to 
fetch it. And they used to come to Ezry's fer ther grindin' 
as fer as that; and one feller I knowed come from what 
used to be the old South Fork, over eighty mild from 
here, and in the wettest, rainyest weather; and mud! 
law!"i 

Every settler tried to have horses, and a horse-thief 
was punished by beating or death, if caught. The 
Indians soon learned the luxury of having a beast of 
burden, other than their squaws, although they had 
never thought of taming or training the buffalo or any 
wild animal to work for them; but they were always 
stealing the horses of the white men. Where there 
were no roads, wagons were little known. There was 
only one in the Territory in 1776 and for many years 
horseback was the general mode of travel. There be- 
ing no bridges, every stream had to be forded if it 
was too wide for a tree to span it. In case a tree 
had been felled across the creek the horses must be 
trained to "toe the log" across the stream. The 
few who made themselves wagons, as time passed, 
made their harness of strips of deer hide and hickory 
bark, and the horse-collars were braided of corn husks. 
But horses were very scarce, and two men would often 
"ride and tie" on their way to town. That is, one 
would ride a mile or two, then tie the horse and walk 
on. When the other man came up, he would untie 
the horse and ride until he overtook his companion. 
When a man and his wife went on a journey, she rode 

' Riley, J. W., Pipes of Pan, page lor. Indianapolis, 1889. 



72 Historic Indiana 

behind on the same horse; generally both carried a 
young child in their arms. All of these crude substi- 
tutions for our everyday conveniences make us realize 
what frontier life, of necessity, was. 

In those days a new flame must be made by striking 
fire from two flints, or a flint and a piece of steel. The 
spark dropping on some inflammable material started 
the flame. Knots or growths taken from old hickory 
trees, and called punk, were treasured by every boy 
for this purpose. Every household had a "tinder- 
box," which contained pieces of flint from the creek, 
a bit of steel, a horn of powder, and some punk. This 
was to rekindle the fire; but when a fire was once 
lighted on a hearth it was carefully tended, and 
the embers covered at night, for matches were then 
unknown. 

The food the frontiersman ate was simple as the 
rest of his living, but his vigorous exercise gave him 
a prodigous appetite. Housewives varied in the ex- 
cellence of their cooking then, as now. Corn-pone, 
hominy, roasting ears, beans, pork, venison, and game 
were the universal articles of diet. Wheaten bread, 
tea, and coffee were luxuries seldom seen. Sassafras 
tea and spicewood tea had to take their place, but the 
pioneer had the best of syrup and sugar, from the maple 
trees in the forest. To supply variety for the table, 
and to take the place of desserts that were no longer 
obtainable, many new experiments were tried. Sorrel 
was made into pie, and acorns used for flour. Wild 
fruit and nuts were eagerly gathered in season and 
stored for winter. Perhaps no country ever produced 
a greater variety of wild fruit and berries than the 
wide, fertile bottom lands of the Wabash and its tribu- 
taries. Wild plum trees and crab-apples, gooseberries. 



The Pioneers 73 

strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries, paw-paws 
(the Indiana banana), persimmons and haws, as well as 
the many varieties of woods grapes, were gathered 
by the early settlers, through the years that they were 
waiting for cultivated orchards. An idea of how 
plentiful wild game was may be formed from a list of 
the fur-bearing animals which were hunted for their 
pelts by the trappers. Bear, deer, buffalo, lynx, 
wild-cat, opossum, beaver, otter, marten, raccoon, 
muskrat, and mink were found in great numbers in 
Indiana. Black, gray, and prairie wolves were so 
numerous and trespassed so persistently until late 
times, that the Legislature granted a bounty on 
wolves' scalps, to encourage their extermination. 
Buffalo were in such vast herds that the Indians were 
known to have killed hundreds in a season, to obtain the 
price of two shillings which they received for the hide ! 
Deer were often shot from the doorstep by the settlers, 
while wild turkey, pigeons, pheasants, and quail were 
everywhere. Fire-hunting the deer was a favorite 
way of killing that animal, which was so much in use 
for meat and pelt. The hunter would go along the 
stream in his canoe, with a pine knot or torch flaming 
from the bow of the boat; when the deer came down 
to the water's brink to slake his thirst, the light would 
"shine his eyes," and, startled, he would stand im- 
movably gazing at it while the rifle of the boatman 
laid him low. The white men learned from the Indians 
their manner of curing the meat of the deer. It was 
called jerked venison. An old-timer said that a 
"hunk of venison" almost invariably hung from the 
rafters, near the chimney-jamb, in every cabin; and 
when "a neighbor man" from any number of miles 
around entered for a visit, he would draw out the 



74 Historic Indiana 

universal hunting knife, and slice off a portion of 
this smoked venison to chew on as the conversation 
progressed. 

Whiskey was invariably offered to a guest in those 
times. Total abstinence was an innovation of later 
years, and the farmer who did not supply his field hands 
with liquor was considered too stingy to work for. 
There was plenty of this home-made liquid, that was 
often so cheap that in summer it soured and in winter 
it froze! " Two fips" a gallon was the price paid for 
this beverage. 

The settlers had great difficulty in securing salt 
for their food, and to preserve their game. It was 
the one cash article of commerce, along with powder. 
Pilgrimages were organized to go to the "licks," 
in large companies, as a guard against surprises by 
the Indians. Once arrived at the salt springs, the 
men camped about until they had evaporated enough 
salt for a year's supply. One of the perquisites claimed 
by the Indians, from the government, in settlement 
of treaties, was their "annuity salt." 

The desirable qualifications of a settler were muscu- 
lar strength and a homely hospitality. One old-timer 
is glorified in the memory of an early chronicler as 
a man who had killed more deer, wolves, and rattle- 
snakes, caught more fish, found more bee-trees, and 
entertained in a hospitable manner more land-hunters, 
trappers, and traders than any other private citizen 
between Vincennes and south of the Solamonie. 

After the settler had raised all the provender needed 
for "man and beast" on his own place, the remainder 
was bartered down the river, for other necessities. 
The more enterprising and industrious he was, the 
more he had to exchange for these luxuries. 



The Pioneers 75 

The first thing the settler coiild produce to realize 
money from was fattening pigs on "oak and beech 
mast," nuts and acorns, and shipping the pork to New- 
Orleans. Later when a sufficient clearing could be 
made, and crops raised, he had begun to be a farmer. 

At this time a cabinet official of the government 
referred to the Wabash as marking the uttermost 
bounds, on the west, of the civilization of the republic. 

Neighborhoods grew up, schools were gradually 
started, and "meetings" were held, when the itinerant 
preachers came around on their circuit of the isolated 
settlements. One of the characteristics of the early 
days was the liberal hospitality connected with the 
religious meetings. Wherever the associational, syn- 
odical, or quarterly meetings were held, each settler 
of the immediate neighborhood would provide for 
a score of people that might come from a distance. 
Long shelves of pies and cakes would be baked, and 
great quantities of spring chicken, mashed potatoes, 
corn-pone, succotash and hot biscuits would be provided. 
As the "meetin' broke," the mother in Israel would 
go about among the congregation, and gather up a 
dozen or more of the attendants from the more remote 
settlements, and take them home to dinner with her. 

The social pleasures of the earliest days were largely 
connected with the helpful neighborhood assistance in 
the homely, necessary tasks of the frontier. If a new 
cabin was to be built, the neighbors assembled for the 
house-raising, for the logs were too heavy to be handled 
alone. When a clearing was made, the log-rolling fol- 
lowed. All the men for miles around came to help, 
and the women to help cook and serve the bountiful 
meals. Then there were corn-huskings, wool-shear- 
ings, apple-parings, sugar-boilings, and quilting-bees. 



76 Historic Indiana 

Each of these community tasks was the occasion for 
a prodigal feast and a visit. Then the isolated house- 
holds came together for much-needed companionship. 
After the hard work was over, these rugged laborers 
were still equal to wrestling matches, shooting for a 
prize, pitching quoits, tug of war, lap jacket, or any 
of the tests of strength or skill on which the frontiers- 
man prided himself. Even in the work itself, they 
"chose sides" and made their labors a contest, to 
see which could outdo the others. When husking 
corn they would sit in a circle on the barn floor, so 
that they could play "brogue it about" (as children 
play pass the thimble) while they were at work. 

Sleigh-riding to the. singing-school, or the spelling- 
match, was the great joy of the winter months, as soon 
as there were roads made through the forest. For rude, 
unconventional enjoyment, there have been few 
pleasures that have atoned for hard labor on the part 
of the young, equal to the bob-sled with its wagon bed 
full of country folk, gaily singing as they sped through 
the clear frosty night. And then the friendly rivalry 
of the spelling-match at the end of the ride! Ranged 
in two long lines under their leaders were the contest- 
ants, who had been chosen for their knowledge of 
the columns of the blue-backed spelling-book. The 
swains and belles of the district spelt each other down, 
until the best speller was left standing in his or her 
glory, the object of parental or family pride — for all 
of their elders were either in the class or ranged around 
the walls. Of equal social importance was the singing- 
school, taught by the local "singing master"; tuning 
fork in hand, and without any accompaniment, he 
trained the whole neighborhood in reading "buck- 
wheat" notes, and singing the hymns from the Sacred 



The Pioneers 77 

Melodeon, or the Missouri Harmony. The little 
log schoolhouse, or church, would be crowded for 
these occasions. The classes were divided into the 
treble, tenor, and bass singers; few of the older books 
recognizing the alto and baritone parts. The churches 
reaped the benefit of this practice, in the improvement 
of their congregational singing. A wedding was also 
the occasion of all-day hospitality to every one far 
and wide. While waiting for the ceremony the young 
fellows used to "run for the bottle" — that is, race 
their horses for a stake, w^hich was a bottle of whiskey, 
and then stand treat. Generally the country fiddler 
came in the evening, and there was a dance on the 
rude puncheon floor by the light from the fireplace. 
With swooping flourishes on his violin, his foot patting 
the accent, and at the same time calling the figures 
in uncouth buffoonery, the fiddler set merry feet to 
flying, to the tune of Old Zip Coon, Jay Bird, 
Old Dan Tucker, or Possum up a Gum Stump. The 
dancing was as vigorous as the music. There were 
"opera reels" and "French fours" and maybe a 
game of "hunt the squirrel." There was little glide 
in the movements : high steps and a flourishing swing, 
with a jig or a "hoe-down" thrown in, was good form 
in those days. Whitcomb Riley gives the spirit of 
those parties in his old fiddler's monologue ^ : 

"My playin's only middlin' — tunes picked up when a 

boy, 
The kindo'-sorto-fiddlin' that the folks calls "cordaroy." 
The Old Fat Gal, and Rye-Straw, and My Sailor's on the 

Sea, 
Is the old cowtillions I 'saw,' when the ch'ice is left to 

me." 

' Riley, James Whitcomb, Poems, 1888. 



78 Historic Indiana 

And so I plunk and plonk and plink, 
And rosum-up my bow, 
And play the tunes that make you think 
The devil's in your toe." 

The roystering element among the Hoosiers of the 
backwoods as well as the better families were extremely 
fond of dancing, and as they were a vigorous, outdoor 
lot of people their dancing was suited to their natures. 
The gay ones cut ' ' pigeon wings ' ' or threw in an extra 
double-shuffle to fill out the measure. Some of the 
"calls" for the square dances were the product of 
the w4ts of the frontier (each neighborhood had its 
own caller), and for their very crudity are worth pre- 
serving. We give one as an example: 

" Balance one and balance eight. 
Swing 'em on the corner like you swing 'em on the gate 
Bow to your lady and then promenade. 
First couple out, to the couple on the right, 
Lady round the lady and the gent solo. 
And the lady round the gent and the gent don't go. 
Ladies do-ce-do and the gents, you know, 
Chicken in a bread-pan, pickin' up dough. 
Turn 'em roun an roun, as pretty as you can. 
An' why in the world don't you left alaman. 
Right hand to partner and grand right and left, 
And a big, big swing, an' a little hug too. 
Swing your honey and she '11 swing you, 
Promenade eight, when you get all straight. 

First couple out to the right — 

Cage the bird, three hands round — 

Birdie hop out and crow hop in, 

Three hands round and go it agin; 

Alaman left, back to partner, an' grand right an' left, 



The Pioneers 79 

Come to your partner once an' a half, 
Yellar canary right, and jay-bird left, 
Next to your partner and all chaw hay. 
You know where an' I don't care, 
Seat your partner in the old arm-chair." 

There were some circles where dancing was not 
approved of, and with these, the chief amusements were 
forfeit games and marching plays. The frontier 
youth played with vigorous zest, ' ' We 're marching 
down to old Quebec," "Old Dusty Miller," "I suppose 
you 've heard of late of George Washington the Great," 
"Come, Philander, let 's be a marching," or "Oh! 
Sister Phoebe, how merry were we, the night we sat 
under the juniper tree, the juniper tree high ho," 
with scores of others that were sung to simple airs, 
while marching with rhythmic motions similar to 
the quadrille or the Virginia reel. Kissing was less ta- 
booed than the dance. The forfeit games, like "Build- 
ing the bridge," "Picking cherries," "Drop the 
handkerchief," "I want no more of your weev'ly 
wheat," "Chase the squirrel if you please and catch 
your love so handy," and dozens of others, were the 
same as are still played by children. 

The field sports of the border would be the envy of 
present-day sportsmen. Besides the daily chance shots 
at game, for food, there were most exciting neighbor- 
hood hunts for wolf, fox, wild hogs, and bear, that re- 
quired mettle and muscle, and the chase was some- 
time kept up for days, and much game bagged. 

Horses and cattle were most necessary to the pioneers 
but they w^ere often deprived of their valuable live 
stock by the bite of poisonous snakes. This occasioned 
another pursuit; in the early spring days when the 
warm sunshine began to awaken nature, and great 



8o Historic Indiana 

numbers of snakes would crawl out of winter hiding, 
the frontiersmen would collect themselves into bands 
and go forth to slay these enemies, often killing hun- 
dreds in a day. As to snakes, says an old settler, 
there was no end to them. Like Pharaoh's frogs of old, 
they were everywhere, in the forest, yard, house, and 
among the children. They were met by willing hands 
and welcomed to hospitable graves. 

Young people of the present time can hardly realize 
that w41d beasts were really plentiful within the State, 
but a couple of true stories, told by Colonel Cockrum, 
will show that such animals were apt to turn up 
at almost any place in the woods. In 1817 Joseph 
Lane — ^who was afterwards a General, a United States 
Senator, and a Vice-Presidential candidate — had 
taken a contract, in partnership with some other 
young men, to raft several hundred logs down the 
Ohio to Mr. Audubon's saw-mill, which was over the 
river, at Henderson, Ky. It was the same Audubon 
who w^as, afterwards, the great ornithologist. 

"We had landed our fine raft of poplar logs," writes 
General Lane, "near the mill; and while the raft was 
being measured, we went to the shanty near by, to eat 
our dinner. As Mr. Audubon went back to the mill, two 
large black bears and a small one ran out of the mill, and 
into a clump of bushes near by. The engineer started 
up the mill machinery, the saw being an up and down gear. 
When the men got ready to commence sawing, they dis- 
covered that a young bear was under the carriage, with 
his head fast in a grease pot, which was much smaller at 
the top than in the middle. The bear had got his head 
in and could not get it out. When one of the men caught 
it by the leg, it set up a screaming, strangling noise and 
the two old bears rushed to its rescue. All of the em- 
ployees made it convenient to get out of danger, I climbed 




A Map of Indiana in 1817. 

From an old print. 



The Pioneers 8i 

up a centre post to a crossbeam. The bears had the mill 
all to themselves. They tried to get the young one away; 
would roll it and try to make it go, without much success. 
The engine was running, the saw going up and down. 
The larger bear was rubbed by the saw; in a minute he 
threw his paws around the frame it ran in, and such 
a pounding as that bear got! He kept his hold until he 
was exhausted, and fell down near the saw blade, which 
touched his shoulder. He jumped up and made a grab 
for it. In less than a minute his life was sawed out of 
him. In the frantic efforts of the old mother bear to 
release the cub, she pushed it off of the platform on a pile 
of logs; which broke the pot, released the cub, and he 
ran off with the rim of the kettle around his neck."^ 

Another tale that Colonel Cockrum tells, is of two 
young boys who came out west in the early twenties, 
to visit their uncle, Robert Stockwell. 

" A neighbor, who was wise in the lore of wild animals, 
took the boys out on a longed-for hunting trip. They 
had gone five or six miles from the village, when they 
spied a. large bear running away from them. Mr. Johnson 
instructed them to tie their horse to a tree, go to a place 
he pointed out, and not move from there, on any account, 
until he returned. On walking around, after waiting a 
long time, they saw two little animals wrestling much 
as boys do, rolling and tumbling over each other. They 
did not have the least idea what they were, but slipped 
up as close as they could and made a rush to catch them, 
which they found hard to do, as the little cubs were much 
more nimble than they looked. They chased them round over 
chunks and brush. Finally one of them ran into a hollow 
log and the younger boy crawled in after it. The older boy 
finally caught the other little bear, when it set up a whining 

' Cockrum, W. M., Pioneer Hist, of Ind., page 511, Oakland 
City, Ind., 1907. 
6 



82 Historic Indiana 

noise and at the same time scratched and bit him. In 
a few minutes he heard the brush crackhng, and looking 
up, saw the old bear coming at him with full force. He 
let the cub go and climbed up a little tree, fortunately 
too small for the bear to climb. She would rear up on 
the tree as though she intended to climb it, and snarl 
and snort at the boy, who was dreadfully scared. About 
this time the little boy in the log had squeezed himself 
through, so that he could reach the other cub, whereupon 
it set up another cry. The old bear left the treed boy 
and ran to the log, and over and around it, uncertain 
where the noise came from. She commenced to tear 
away the wood, so she could get to her cub, for she was 
too large to get more than her head in the hole. The 
boys were thus imprisoned for more than two hours, when a 
shot was fired not far off. The boy up the tree set up a 
terrible hallooing, and Mr. Johnson soon came in sight. 
A second shot soon killed the old bear. The young bear 
was caught, and tied; and the little boy came out of the 
log, dragging the other cub, which they also took home 
for a pet." ^ 

In ye olden time, stump speaking during a political 
campaign was a great social feature and drew the whole 
countryside together; for the Anglo-Saxon must hear 
all there is to be said on politics. An old settler writing 
of these canvasses said that the population w-as so 
sparse in the district in which their candidate for Congress 
was electioneering that it extended from the Ohio River 
to Lake ]\Iichigan, but it contained more Indians, w^olves, 
and wild varmints than voters. 

Trading was a feature of every assembling of the 
people, social, religious, or political. They stood 
about the church doors before and after "meetin'," or 

1 Cockrum, W. M., Pioneer Hist, of Ind., page 511. Oakland 
City, Ind,, 1907. 



The Pioneers 83 

around the public square on "court day," to dicker 
about the articles they needed; for then barter was 
universal, owing to the dearth of currency. An editor 
announced that he would take his pay for subscriptions 
in corn, ginseng, honey, flour, pork, or almost anything 
but promises. The articles advertised for sale which 
could be had "for cash only" were powder, shot, 
whiskey, and salt. 

One of the greatest privations of the pioneer's exile 
was the absence of letters from home. There was no 
post and every one was dependent upon chance travellers 
to "fetch and carry mail." When any one was going 
on a journey it would be known, and the whole region 
would bring letters for him to take with him, for postage 
on a letter cost forty cents. Many of these missives 
from the frontier were written with a quill pen, dipped 
in pokeberry juice for ink. It was a great thing, wrote 
an old lady in later times, when the pioneers began to 
get mail regularly twice a month. Sounding his 
horn, the postman approached on horseback, and every 
one came trooping out of the house hoping to get a 
letter from "back east." Sometimes he would be 
several days behind time, on account of high water. 
It often happened that the postmaster had to spread 
the mail out in the sun to dry. 

The loneliness of their isolated situation made the 
pioneers very hospitable in their welcome to visitors. 
One of them writes of the attendance at a land-sale; 
if men had ever been to the same mill, or voted at the 
same election precinct, though at different times, it 
was sufficient for them to scrape an acquaintance upon. 
Very soon it would come to be known which house- 
wife, on a trail, was the best cook and housekeeper, 
and that cabin would be singled out as the goal for 



84 Historic Indiana 

the day's journey. In this way some of the best 
families began to "keep tavern." If they did not 
make a charge, hospitable people were imposed upon 
by a class of travellers who invariably ' ' sponged their 
way," as it was termed, for an entire journey. There 
were men who profited greatly by the ' 'likker sold, and 
set up reg'lar." To be able to sell liquor, a man must 
have a tavern license, certifying that he was a free- 
holder, and that he had two spare beds and two 
stalls, that were not necessary for his own use ! Many 
wayhouses where the owners would not dispense liquor 
needed no license and advertised their places as "pri- 
vate entertainment." The usual charges were twenty- 
five cents for a meal and a "fip" for a "dram." The 
patrons that the tavern host welcomed came on horse- 
back. Their boots had been well tallowed to resist 
water, and their legs were swathed in leggins of green 
baize. They generally dismounted grimy with dust, 
or bespattered with mud; and were met on the long 
low porch by a boy with a pair of moccasins or "pomps " 
in which their feet were shod, while their heavy boots 
were dried by the great open fire. The merchants 
and professional men carried a brace of pistols, and 
across their horse was a pair of saddle-bags. In this 
receptacle, now obsolete, the gentleman could stow 
away all of his papers, law books, bottle of bitters, 
an extra pair of horseshoes, and wearing apparel for 
the journey. They rode good horses, which often had 
to be "tethered out" on grass at night for lack of 
stable room. Other guests of the inn were wagoners, 
driving oxen or mule teams over the heavy roads to 
the river towns where they shipped the loads of produce 
to market. Each tavern had to provide large yards 
for the wagoners, and for hogs being driven overland. 



The Pioneers 85 

The accommodations for travellers, in these early 
taverns, were very primitive, a near-by stream or 
the pump and a "roller towel" doing duty for a bath, 
and high feather beds welcoming the weary to rest. 
Some of these hostelries were noted for the prodigality 
of plain food and good cheer which was offered to the 
patrons. Card-playing and toddy, in an upper room, 
were very general where the landlord was not a temper- 
ance man. Then the wee small hours saw lands and 
chattels change hands, as the game waxed in interest. 
Memories of old signboards that used to creak on 
the comer of these historic buildings come back to old 
settlers. We are told of one that was fashioned like 
a gate, and on the pickets was printed, 

" This gate hangs high and hinders none, 
Refresh and pay, then travel on. 

"John Fernly." 

On another notable work of art,. which was executed 
for a tavern on the National Road, there was a portrait 
of General La Fayette in full uniform. We are told 
that the board on which it was painted was not long 
enough for the heroic scale on which the picture was 
begun, so the legs were cut short and the feet put on 
where the knees should have been! Red House Inn 
on the old State Road had for its sign a warhorse 
rampant and fully caparisoned for battle. The recent 
War of 181 2 with England suggested the sign for another 
tavern— the painting represented an eagle picking out 
the eyes of a lion. Like the old "Buck Horn Tavern," 
which in the palmy days of the National Road is said 
to have kept over a hundred guests of a summer night, 
by the aid of the hay-mows and covered wagons of 
the movers, no hostlery of log cabin days would ever 



86 Historic Indiana 

care to acknowledge that there was not room for one 
more. 

Religious meetings in those days were thronged 
by young and old, wherever a travelling preacher gave 
out an "appointment" to speak. Some came in ox- 
carts, others on foot, but mostly the people came on 
horseback, two and three on behind each other. 
From eight and ten miles around they flocked to hear 
the gospel. Marriages were solemnized all along his 
circuit, and funeral sermons were preached for all the 
departed who had been buried without any religious 
rites, in the preceding months since a minister had come 
that way — even if the remaining bereaved one had 
been consoled by a subsequent marriage. 

Generally these preachers wxre very practical in 
their exhortations. The eccentric Lorenzo Dow an- 
nounced his subject as Repentance. 

"We sing, 'while the lamp of life holds out to burn, the 
vilest sinner may return.' That idea has done much 
harm and should be received with many grains of allow- 
ance. Let me illustrate. Do you suppose that the man 
among you who went out last fall to kill his deer and bear 
for winter meat, and instead killed his neighbor's hogs, 
salted them down, and is now living on the meat, can 
repent while it is unpaid for? I tell you, nay. Except 
he restores a just compensation, his attempt at repent- 
ance will be the basest hypocrisy. 'Except ye repent, 
truly ye shall all likewise perish.'"^ 

His sermon lasted thirty minutes. Dow^n he stepped, 
mounted his pony, and in a few moments was moving 
through the woods at a rapid gait, to meet another 
appointment. Restitution before claiming a clear 

' Smith, O. H., Early Trials, page 96. Cincinnati., 185S. 



The Pioneers 87 

conscience would still be a good doctrine to hold forth. 
As an example of how primitive the conditions, and 
unconventional the speakers might be, it is told of one 
of these circuit riders that he interrupted his discourse, 
at an outdoor service, by exclaiming, as he gazed 
upward into a tree, * ' I want to say right here, that yon- 
der is one of the best forks for a pack-saddle I ever 
saw in the woods, and when the services are over, 
we will get it." 

Besides the preachers, there were colporteurs, now 
long obsolete and forgotten, who went about distribut- 
ing Bibles and tracts from the publication societies. 
They were far more welcome to those isolated inhabi- 
tants than we can imagine, in these sophisticated 
days. 

Next to the ministers, the most accepted nomadic 
characters were the tinkers, who travelled through 
wide regions, repairing the clocks. In later times the 
spinster tailors, and the local cobblers, who came semi- 
annually, to mend and make clothes and shoes for the 
entire family, were a regular institution. If one could 
not get to the shop the shop must come to the customer. 
These welcome tradesmen had their rounds, and their 
coming was counted on ; not only for the very necessary 
services they rendered, but for the gossip they brought, 
from far-off neighborhoods. 

A frontier personage who has passed into oblivion with 
the water-diviner, is the bee-hunter. Sweets were a 
great rarity. Map] e sugar and wild honey were the con- 
fections of the wilderness. The wild bees made their 
honey in the hollows of the trees and the bee-man was a 
wonderfully acute naturalist, who, by long observation of 
the habits of the bees, could tell in which tree the honey 
could be found. On his decision, great trees were felled, 



88 Historic Indiana 

even on a stranger's land, to secure the coveted honey. 
One long, lank bee-hunter, who looked like a ferret, 
declared that "on a clear day I can see a bee a mile." 
In those times peddlers, with packs on their backs, 
journeyed through the country with "notions and 
small ware" for exchange or sale. 

The frontiersman's most valued possession was a 
dog ; this animal was not only a prized friend and hunt- 
ing companion, but was invaluable to give warning 
of approaching Indians. 

In these troublesome times, the militia were always 
being called out for actual w^arfare against the savages, 
and there was regular "muster day" and an attempt 
at regular drill. Muster day was the great gala occasion 
of the border. People gathered from far and near 
to visit together. Oliver Smith gives us a hint of the 
crude equipment with which the men appeared for duty, 
by the commands given on the parade ground which 
he rehearses: "Ofificers to your places. Marshal your 
men into companies, separating the barefooted from 
those who have shoes or moccasins ; placing the guns, 
sticks, and cornstalks in separate platoons. Form the 
line ready to receive the Major." ^ They were not 
a very gallant looking troop perhaps, but they were 
brave, and wise in the cunning of the savage forms of 
warfare. 

The schooling of this pioneer period in Indiana 
was of the crudest form. The schoolhouses were like 
the homes, log cabins with puncheon floors and great 
open fireplaces into which the big boys must roll in 
logs for the fire. Those who sat near roasted, and the 
pupils farther away froze their toes. The seats were 
logs or benches, without either backs or desks. The 

1 Smith, O. H., Early Trials, page 167. Cincinnati, 1858. 



The Pioneers 89 

theory of instruction was "no lickin' " no larnin'. " 
There was a long writing-bench placed against the wall. 
It was made of a riven board or a puncheon, smoothed 
off and supported by great wooden pegs. At this 
the pupils took turns in copy-book work, writing with 
a pen made from a goose-quill, and using pokeberry 
juice for ink, A spelling match on Friday afternoon 
was an inalienable right of every district school, — an 
older custom even than speaking pieces, that universal 
practice which occasioned so much tremor and glory 
among the pupils. Boys and girls often attended 
school in the fall long after the hard frosts came, and 
even after the ice had begun to form, with their feet en- 
cased in old socks or stockings. Sanford Cox, in his 
Wabash Valley, draws a graphic picture of juveniles 
skating upon the ice, some with skates, some with 
shoes, and some barefooted. The author of the 
History of Monroe County says that it was then the 
custom to go to school, winter and summer, bare- 
footed. That seems unreasonable, but it was done. 
The barefooted child, to begin with, had gone thus 
so long that his feet were hardened and calloused to 
resist the cold by several extra layers of epidermis. 
He would take a small piece of board, say a foot wide 
and two feet long, which had been seasoned and 
partially scorched by the fire, and after heating it until 
it was on the point of burning, he would start on the 
run toward the schoolhouse, with the hot board in his 
hand, and when his feet became too cold to bear any 
longer, he would place the board upon the ground and 
stand upon it until the numbness and cold had been 
partly overcome, when he would again take his " stove." 
in his hand and make another dash for the schoolhouse. 
Sometimes a fiat, light piece of rock was substituted 



9© Historic Indiana 

for the board and was much better, as it retained 
heat longer. Often boys would rouse up a cow 
and stand in the place she had warmed, to prevent 
their feet from freezing. To save their shoes, it was 
very general for people to walk barefooted along the 
dusty roads, until they approached the " meeting 
house," and then sit down by the roadside and put on 
their stockings and shoes. 

New homes were sometimes started with very little 
capital in hand. Many stories are told of these primi- 
tive weddings. It is recorded that one morning, a 
certain Esquire Jones saw a young man ride up with 
a young lady behind him. They dismounted; he 
hitched his horse and they went toward the house and 
were invited to be seated. After waiting a few minutes 
the young man asked if he was a 'squire. He informed 
him that he was. He then asked the " 'squire " what 
he charged for tying the knot. "You mean for marry- 
ing you?" — "Yes, sir." "One dollar," says the 'squire — 
"Will you take it in trade ? "— " What kind of trade? " 
"Beeswax." — "Bring it in." The young man went 
to where the horse was tied and brought in the beeswax, 
but it lacked forty cents of being enough to pay the 
bill. After sitting pensive for some minutes, the 
young man went to the door and said: "Well, Sal, 
let 's be going." Sal followed slowly to the door, 
when, turning to the justice, with an entreating look, 
she said: "Well, 'Squire, can't you tie the knot as far 
as the beeswax goes anyhow," and so he did, and they 
were married. 

One of the customs in the very first settlement of the 
territory was that those arrested for crimes and misde- 
meanors were chained to a tree or pinioned under sonie 
logs until trial could be held, if not more summarily 



The Pioneers 91 

disposed of by the Regulators! Afterwards there 
were jails built of logs, as also were the court- 
houses, and the prisoner worked out his sentence 
by grubbing stumps to clear the streets of the 
town. 

Sickness was one of the ever-present dreads of the 
frontier. The very fertility of the soil in Indiana 
made it miasmatic. Ponds and streams bred mosqui- 
toes to spread malaria to the — all unknowing — settlers. 
Exposure in all kinds of weather, and the opening 
up of the forests, the turning up of the new earth, all 
contributed to slow fevers, and the shaking ague then 
so universal. Many years in the autumn season there 
were more people sick than were well. Sometimes there 
were scarcely enough in health to care for those who 
were ill. Quinine bark, calomel, and boneset were the 
principal articles of commerce at those times. 

One of the worst ills with which those people had 
to contend was what was known as milk sickness. 
Even scientific men, with all their investigation, have 
not been able to discover what plant caused this pesti- 
lence. They only know that with increased cultivation 
of the fields it disappeared, but in the early part of the 
Western settlement whole families were prostrated 
in a week, from using the milk of one cow. Sometimes 
they would drag around like living skeletons, and 
finally succumb. It destroyed the value of the lands, 
as people moved from neighborhoods where it was 
known cows had got access to it. Sometimes the 
settlers would move away, on the theory that it was 
the water. 

Whiskey was a remedy in almost universal use against 
malaria. It did not require a physician's prescription, 
but the effects were often worse than the malady. 



92 Historic Indiana 

In Mrs. Blake's Heart's Haven^ there is a pen picture of 
a typical cabin home on the lower Wabash, and the 
effect of the deadly malaria and whiskey used as an 
antidote : 

"They were rich in youth, health, and courage, and the 
young wife's bright spirit turned the difficulties and pri- 
vations into a romantic experience. She helped to clear 
the land, build the cabin, and plant the fields. She learned 
to shoot bears, defend herself from Indians, and kill snakes; 
to weave, to brew, and to nurse sick neighbors. Every 
year she brought a child into the world of want and hard- 
ship, until now there were two little graves in the woods 
for those who could not stay, and six little creatures in 
the comfortless cabin, that was no larger and no better, for 
all of their work and self-denial. The wife was changed, 
gaunt, sallow, shaken by ague, consumed by fevers, worn 
by toil, hardened and embittered by life's broken promises. 
The change maddened the husband. He saw that hard- 
ship was destroying her, — hardship that he was powerless 
to help. He could not conquer circumstances, he could 
only suffer in them, but he could drug his feelings in 
whiskey, — whiskey which made it possible to counteract 
the miasma of the middle West; which was the panacea 
for ague, snake bites, and poisons. It also fortified men 
for explorations, Indian raids, struggles with wild beasts, 
and Herculean toil, and it could also make them forget 
their hard conditions. Alas! it could also instigate foolish- 
ness and cruelty." 

Many tales are told of the doctors, to whose practices 
the early settlers were subjected. In Mr. Duncan's very 
interesting reminiscences, he humorously remarks, 
that they generally provided themselves with a goodly 
supply of the largest lancets and unmeasured quantities 
of English calomel. A flaring sign painted on a clap- 

» Blake, Mrs., Heart's Haven, Indianapolis, 1905. 



The Pioneers 93 

board was hung out, and as opportunity offered they 
went forth ; first to take from the unfortunate patient 
all the blood that could be extracted from his veins 
without killing on the spot; then he was dosed with 
calomel enough to kill a gorilla, confined in a close 
room, and was to neither eat nor drink. The treat- 
ment killed quickly but cured slowly. Many of these 
early practitioners were dubbed "Death on a pale 
horse." Doubtless the openness of the log cabins, ad- 
mitting plenty of air, saved many a poor soul racked 
with fever. Some of these men were educated, but 
others entered on their careers with the barest prepa- 
ration possible, and those who brought the profession 
into contempt often had no knowledge of medicine at 
all. There were root doctors and mesmerists and all 
sorts of frauds who hung out their sign and made 
themselves dangerous to the community. To one 
ignorant pretender, who had gone into the practice 
without any preparation, an acquaintance said : "Well, 
Doctor, how goes the practice? " — " Only tolerable; I 
lost nine fine patients last week, one of them being an 
old lady that I wanted to cure very bad, but she died in 
spite of all I could do. I tried every root I could find, 
but she steadily grew worse. ' ' And still he got patients. 
An old pioneer told, in the following quaint fashion, 
his experience with the early practitioners. About his 
seventeenth year he was taken ill. The neighbors said 
he had a kind of bilious fever. The only doctor was 
living over on Middle Fork, several miles away; he 
came on horseback with his saddle-bags of medicine, 
comprising tartar-emetic, calomel, jalap, castor oil, 
salts, and a thumb and spring lancet. After counting 
the beats of the patient's throbbing pulse, he proceeded 
to give him an emetic, then had him take calomel and 



94 Historic Indiana 

jalap. Returning two days later he administered 
more emetics and bled him with his spring lancet until 
the boy fainted. The doctor said he was taking 
him through a course of medicine to prostrate his 
system, to break the fever. After continuing his 
visits for about two weeks, he said he always succeeded 
in curing by salivating his patients. The boy on the 
bed was now reduced to a mere skeleton. To be sure 
the fever was broken, for there was little left to create 
a fever. "The old doctor believed that the salivation 
was the salvation of me, but with all due respect," 
said he in after years, "I believe nature got the upper 
hand and cured me in spite of his strong medicine, 
bleeding, and tinkering; but he damaged my tenement 
irreparably." 

Unfortunately, from these old stories, some still as- 
sociate these early ailments with Indiana at its present 
state, w^hen in fact it is one of the healthiest sections of 
the Union. Cultivation of the soil and drainage have 
eliminated the danger which beset the health of the 
early settlers. 

In later years, when the prairies attracted emigration, 
another terror of the frontier was experienced by the 
settlements of the northern part of Indiana. This 
was the prairie fires. From fall to spring, the season 
when the grass was dry and Indians or campers' fires 
might spread disaster, the settlers would sleep with 
one eye open, to be ready to fight the destruction of 
their homes and improvements. It was an unequal 
combat at best. Often the lurid light of the oncoming 
flame would light the whole visible world. Sometimes 
the wall of fire would reach from ten to fifty feet in 
height. A horse could not outtravel it. Snakes, 
wolves, and deer would run before the advancing heat, 



I 



The Pioneers 95 

and frightened birds would fly screaming before the 
flames. After the fire had passed, the smoke was 
suffocating, and for months afterwards the charred 
and blackened waste marked the path of the fire. 
Often the only shelter of the poor settlers was left 
in ruins. 

Earlier than we should now think possible, when we 
consider how entirely the Western pioneers were cut off 
from communication with the older settlements, those 
hopeful toilers added to their homes more and more of 
the comforts of life. Many of the large log cabins were 
covered with weather-boarding, and stood for years as 
substantial colonial homes. The example of the thrifty 
helped the more shiftless to improve. Fruits and vines 
were planted. Houses were added to, and furniture 
and china were brought up the river. Neighborhood 
cabinet-makers fashioned cupboards, beds, and bureaus 
of the wild-cherry lumber, and owing to the honest 
workmanship they last until this day. All the con- 
ditions of living constantly improved. Innovations 
were a source of wonderment to the real backwoods 
element, and amusing instances happened. In one sec- 
tion where the Rev. Samuel R. Johnson had brought a 
piano out with him, when he moved his family from 
New York, it happened that a parishioner from the 
AVild-Cat Prairie called to see the Rector. In the 
parlor of the parsonage she saw, for the first time 
in her life, a piano, and had no idea what it was. 
Pianos were square in those days and this one was 
closed, with the round stool placed in front of it. 
After looking a long time at the great polished piece of 
furniture she exclaimed: "Well, that is the biggest 
work-box and the mightiest pincushion I ever saw." 
The first stoves that were brought into any section 



96 Historic Indiana 

drew curious visitors from miles around, to see the 
new invention for making life easy! 

"We are having innovations betokening too much 
fashion, ' ' says an old letter ; ' ' one of our dandies appears 
daily wearing silver spurs and embroidered gloves!" 
In those days patterns and styles came ambling at a 
deliberate pace, to the remote West, one year or the 
next making little difference. 

There was little money in circulation then, and it 
took very little to sustain life on the frontier. At 
twenty years of age, a man, afterwards famous, started 
in as a lawyer in Indiana, with the noble ambition of 
securing a practice worth four hundred dollars a year. 

In the life of privation and toil on the border, there 
were many homes where the traditions of gentleness and 
culture were maintained, and every effort to improve 
their growing children was made. 

In writing his very interesting history of the Lake 
counties, and their early settlement, Mr. Ball says of 
that section, what was true of the whole frontier: that 
home life being an important part of true life, and as 
we have looked into these early homes, we have seen 
that warmth and light, and industry and thrift were 
there. In these homes you would find the mother and 
sisters knitting or spinning, the father and boys, 
fashioning a new axe handle or braiding a whiplash, 
and another roasting the apples and mulling the cider 
on the hearth, while an older sister or the boarding 
"school-ma'am" reads aloud from Robbie Burns or 
Bunyan or Shakespeare. We realize that isolation in 
the forest, sometimes, meant time for culture, as well 
as toil. If they were shut in to themselves, there was 
an uninterrupted existence which our rapid trans- 
portation, with its flittings south in the winter, to the 



The Pioneers 97 

sea-shore or mountains in summer, and maybe Europe 
in between times, may have destroyed; and some 
of the pleasures of continuous family life may have 
been lost. 

In a country so free and where all had equal oppor- 
tunity, men were ambitious. Only the most ignorant 
and benighted were ever content, unless they were 
increasing their possessions. Work was so honorable 
that these pioneers ostracized a man who was considered 
"a little slack in the twist" about avoiding labor. 
In marked contrast to the dull hopelessness of the Old 
World from which the foreign settlers had emigrated, 
was the determined purpose of the people of the West. 
As has been truly said, through the whole household 
there shone the light of a fine vigor and bright expect- 
ancy. The women were as courageous, as capable, and 
as zealous as the men. They became inured to toil, 
privations, and dangers. A story is told of one woman 
on the prairies when the wind was blowing a perfect 
hurricane, to the great terror of a transient guest: 
the hostess gently admitted, that the wind "was 
noticeable." Many a woman, when notified that the 
Indians threatened a raid, refused to leave her cabin 
to their desolating firebrands, and they defended 
their homes by firing through the chinks between the 
logs, until help came from the settlements. When 
widowed, they kept their children together, and with 
the help of their boys they ran the farm in the lonely 
clearing. 

"There are many diseases now, unheard of then," 
said Mrs. Rebecca Julian who was one of these very 
pioneers, "such as dyspepsia, neuralgia, etc. It was 
not fashionable at that time to be weakly. We could 
take up our spinning-wheel and walk two miles to a 



98 Historic Indiana 

spinning frolic, do our day's work after a first-rate 
supper, join in some amusement for the evening. 
We never thought of having hands just to look at." ^ 
A managing mother would take a probable suitor 
for her daughter's heart around the cabin and show the 
bundles of yam the young girl had spun, and the cover- 
lids she had woven. The frontier mother's hands were 
never idle. From flax to linen from wool to cloth, 
from spinning the yam to finished stocking, she was 
the manufacturer for her household. Nor was it 
possible to accomplish all of these duties by daylight. 
Back and forth by the firelight of the great open fire 
which enabled the father and son to shape the scythe 
handles and cobble their own shoes, the graceful girl 
passed to the hum of the whirring wheel. Her swift 
expertness as she deftly turned the thread in her fingers, 
made a picture of industry and skill, very captivating 
to the country swain. The spinning-wheel, wrote 
Judge Ristine, was a stringed instrument which fur- 
nished the principal music of every household, high 
or lowly. These home manufacturers dyed their 
yarns with the ooze from the bark of different trees, 
and vied with each other in the skill of coloring. 

A traveller in 1830, writing of the excellent dames of 
Brookville, including the wife of the United States 
Senator, said they, in the exercise of "woman's rights," 
milked their own cows, churned their own butter, and 
made their own brooms. 

A few extracts from the private journal of a new- 
comer among these pioneer mothers w^ill give an idea 
of their lives upon the frontier. 

"November loth — To-day was cider-making day and 
all were up at sunrise. 
' Personal Reminiscences. 



The Pioneers 99 

"December ist — We killed a beef to-day, the neighbors 
helping. 

"December 4th — I was very much engaged in trying 
out my tallow. To-day I dipped candles and finished the 
Vicar of Wakefield. 

"December 8th — To-day I commenced to read the Life 
of Washington, and I borrowed a singing book. Have 
been trying to make a bonnet. The cotton we raised 
serves a very good purpose for candle-wicking, when spun." 

It seems incredible that the own granddaughters 
of these toiling women now find themselves on the 
very same spot, living in a factory age where every 
article they use or eat may be bought ready-made. 
Truly, as Jane Addams has pointed out, the 
present generation of women should feel and show 
every consideration for the factory hand, who per- 
forms the labors by machinery which formerly must 
all be done in the homes. Factory labor has lifted 
the burden of actual manufacture of every article 
used in the home from the w^omen of the third 
generation. 

Many a frontier mother, in addition to all her toil, 
taught her children their lessons, before there were any 
schools available. Had there been less labor, and no 
terror of the savages, wild beasts, and snakes, nor 
anxiety over wasting fevers, still the isolation and 
homesickness in the wilderness would have been enough 
to make the stoutest hearts quail before the undertaking. 

But the dark side of the picture of early emigration 
seems to have had an overweaning bright side, which 
drew the people like a magnet to the West. 

In an old-settlers' meeting a pioneer of Milton was 
called on for his experience. He gave an account of 
his removal to the region, and the gratification he 



loo Historic Indiana 

felt in exchanging the red soil, full of flint stones, of 
his native Carolina, for the black and fertile lands of 
Indiana. In the vigor of his youth, he regarded not 
the Herculean labors and hardships which then rose 
before him, for, to use his own words, he felt that he had 
a fortune in his own bones. Those from well-to-do 
Southern families immediately took an interest in 
politics and gained preferment in office-holding, as 
well as lucrative law practice. Land speculation was 
in the minds of those who had some money. It was 
not only the rich soil, the broad acres, the greater op- 
portunity for the young beginner, which lured them 
hither. With many, it was a vision of the greater 
freedom in the wilderness, the sense of space on the 
prairies. It is often a matter of wonder to older civili- 
zations, why these pioneers came to the forbidding 
frontier. Often they left good homes, friends, families, 
comforts, safety, and advantages of culture and social 
intercourse. As Julian Hawthorne has said, pioneer- 
ing was in their blood, and in their traditions. They 
had listened in childhood to tales of adventure told 
by the fireside, half true and half apocryphal. They 
were familiar with the log cabin, the rifle, and the saddle. 
They went forth to win an independent footing in the 
world. It was seldom the hegira of an organized 
community; each individual or family set forth on an 
independent basis. 

Besides these families of sterling character who came 
West and made the "bone and sinew" of the nation, we 
have seen that there were many individuals known 
as " poor whites," of no occupation, who migrated two 
or three times in one lifetime. Starting from "Ole 
Caroline," they came up through "Kentuck," sojourned 
a year or two in Indiana and moved on westward, until 



The Pioneers loi 

their bones finally rested in Pike County, across the 
Missouri. The story of one of these migratory families, 
who formed an entirely different class from the real 
pioneer settlers, is told by a centenarian daughter of 
one of these men. 

" When I was a woman grown and married, with children 
of my own, my man and daddy took a notion they 'd try 
Injianny. So we all came, with just one wagon to carry 
our things and the children, while the rest of us walked, 
me toting my baby. We didn't seem to do as well here, 
and by 'n' by daddy wanted to go back and we went with 
him. Then we seemed to do worse than ever there, and 
daddy said he'd try Injianny again, and we come. Inji- 
anny didn't 'pear to be much better than Tennessee, and 
daddy took a notion again. I was getting despert tired 
of travel, but daddy coaxed me and mammy coaxed me, and 
this time they promised they would stay, and seeing they 
were bent on it I agreed. So five times, I walked back and 
forth between Tennessee and Injianny, kase I would have 
followed my daddy and mammy to the ends of the 
earth." 1 

But it was not alone the shiftless ones who changed 
their abiding-places. "I must be moving on" quoth 
Daniel Boone, who had come out from the New 
Carolinas to the wilds of Kentucky. ' ' Why, a man has 
taken up a farm right over there, not twenty-five 
miles from my door." He could only breathe freely 
in vast solitude. These hardy adventurers were not 
the only emigrants. Some of the best English families, 
well-to-do where they were, moved forward in each gen- 
eration. The Lincolns, through which the President's 
genealog>^ is traced, were for six generations, with a 
single exception, pioneers in the settlement of the new 

' Indiana Magazine of History, vol. i., page 107. 



I02 Historic Indiana 

countries. John Richmond left an ancient manor in 
south England, to establish a sea-coast colony in 
Massachusetts; his descendants moved to the Berk- 
shire Hills, in the western part of that State; and their 
son settled in eastern New York. After John, of the 
next generation, had seen Fulton take the first steam- 
boat up the Hudson River, he moved to the West, 
and was an old settler when he witnessed the first 
railroad train come into Indianapolis. To take up 
lands unhampered by the towns, his son Corydon 
Richmond moved his medical practice to the wilder- 
ness of Howard County, then still in the possession of 
the Indians. 

Miss Anna Jenners tells of a pioneer woman who it 
must be admitted, had endured the extreme experiences 
of this spirit of Westward Ho ! She used to recount how 
her father and mother had been one of the earlier 
couples to migrate from the East to Ohio, where they 
settled themselves in the wilds of the forest, and hewed 
out for themselves a home. In time, they acquired 
the comforts of home life, including all of the necessary 
buildings, gardens, and orchards of the most prosperous 
settlers. Here it would be supposed they would have 
lived to an old age ; but the new lands opened to settle- 
ment in Indiana attracted the father ; and after selling 
his beautiful homestead, he carried his family to the 
more fertile banks of the Wabash. In a rude cabin 
in the woods, where at night they often heard bears 
scratching on the low roof, they began the task anew. 
Always prosperous, the father cultivated his virgin 
acres successfully, until broad fields were added, and 
a large house was planned. For the new residence he 
sent all the way back to Ohio and had bricks haiiled out, 
and interior finish and cabinet work made, which it 



The Pioneers 103 

was not possible to have manufactured on the frontier. 
When the comforts and luxuries had become attainable, 
the daughter married ; and soon the broad prairies of 
Kansas lured her husband toward that new territory ; 
and again she passed through the discomforts and ex- 
periences of border life. In her old age, though possessed 
of a good home and vast acres, she was dragged to the 
new Dakotas by her son, who perpetuated the pioneer's 
longing for the frontier. 

When Marion County was still a wilderness, one of 
its young men, feeling crowded by incomers, slung 
his rifle over his shoulder and disappeared farther 
west beyond the Mississippi, and was never heard of 
again by his family, until the Civil War broke out. 
Then he reappeared as a bugler in an Oregon regiment, 
old and gray, but still ready for adventure and unafraid 
of hardships, as long as it was life in the open. 

These sketches of family histories are outlined be- 
cause they are widely typical of many of Anglo-Saxon 
lineage, who had the love of the soil in their blood. 

The same impulse which prompted the Teutonic 
race to make their incursions on Britain, and led 
their descendants across the Atlantic, seemed to have 
possessed each succeeding generation until the Pacific 
was reached and the western coast was settled. The 
Middle West was but the Atlantic colonies transferred 
to a freer life and ideals one more remove from Old- 
World standards. The opening up of new fields to 
the race proved a wonderful stimulus to the national 
life, and the growth of the United States as a world 
power. When these people settled the western 
borders they took with them their intelligence, virility, 
love of country, passion for liberty, and desire for 
knowledge. Hence, orderly governments, schools, 



I04 Historic Indiana 

courts of justice, and charitable institutions sprang 
up from their efforts. The wilderness, to such natures, 
meant opportunity and freedom. As one said, " You 
do not need to keep on the path for there is no path. 
Each may mark out a future for himself, nor did we 
miss the satisfaction that comes from the constant 
victory over odds." 

In addition to this love of space and freedom, 
many frontiersmen had a perception of the picturesque 
and the poetic. Their letters were full of the beauties 
of river, woodland, and flowers. The verse of the 
day was largely descriptive of the ocean-like prairies, 
the brook that runs murmuring by, the arching sky 
and flowering earth, and "The Bonnie Brown Bird in 
the Mulberry Tree." 

On the frontier, equality of circumstances, common 
dangers, hopes, privations, and mutual interests 
created a homely tie of brotherhood and true democ- 
racy, dear to the Anglo-Saxon nature. As time passed 
in their forest isolation, intermarriages of the families 
strengthened the bonds of union. 

Of the character of these first pioneers, no better 
portrayal could be made, than in the eloquent tribute 
of Reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones to the father of 
Abraham Lincoln. 

"Only he who knows what it means to hew a home 
out of the forest; of what is involved in the task of re- 
placing mighty trees with corn; only he who has watched 
the log house rising in the clearing and has witnessed the 
devotedness that gathers around the old log school house 
and the pathos of a grave in the wilderness can under- 
stand how sobriety, decency, aye, devoutness, beauty, and 
power belong to the story of those who began the mighty 
task of changing the wild west into the heart of a teeming 



The Pioneers 105 

continent. In pleading for a more just estimate of Thomas 
Lincoln, I do but plead for a higher appreciation of that 
stalwart race who pre-empted the Mississippi Valley to 
civilization, who planted the seed that has since grown 
school houses and churches innumerable. They were men 
not only of great hearts, but of great heads, aye, women, 
too, with laughing eyes, willing hands, and humble spirits." ^ 

1 Address at Lincoln Centre, 1906. 



CHAPTER VII 

INDIANA TERRITORY 
1763-1816 

** ¥ SHALL stand 'til morning in the path you are 

I walking," said the Chief Pontiac to Major Rogers, 
who, with his English forces, was sent out from 
Montreal to take possession of the western posts, 
after the French had surrendered Canada. To a 
council of Indians the same Chief said: "The Great 
Spirit has appeared and spoken, — why do you suffer 
these dogs in red clothing to enter your country and 
take the land I gave you." ^ 

Such was the first effect of English victories and 
the withdrawal of the French authority. 

From the earliest landing of the first Europeans 
in America, there had been innumerable and contin- 
uous conflicts between the races. Although not ap- 
pearing in this conflict so early as the Atlantic colonies, 
the Northwest Territory, of which Indiana formed a 
part, suffered in consequence of the war of races, 
from the time La Salle first explored her forests to 
within the memory of persons now living. And the 
history of Indiana's Territorial period is the story of 
that encounter. 

After Pontiac's War in the autumn of 1764, when 

> Dillon, J. B., History of Indiana, page 68. Indianapolis, 1859. 

106 



Indiana Territory 107 

peace with the Indians was declared, the British again 
assumed control of all the western posts and held 
them, until, as we have recorded, fourteen years later, 
when General George Rogers Clark captured the forts 
for the American colonies. One of the pioneers 
has left an interesting account of the mode of savage 
warfare which prevailed through all the years of 
settlement. He says that the Indians in attacking 
a place are seldom seen in force upon any quarter, 
but dispersed, and acting individually or in small 
parties; they always conceal themselves in the bushes 
or weeds, or behind trees or stumps, or waylay the 
path or field where the settlers are obliged to work, 
and when one or more can be taken down, they fire the 
gun or let fly the arrow. If they dare they advance 
upon this killed or crippled victim and take his scalp 
or make him prisoner. They cut off the garrison by 
killing the cattle and watch the watering-places and 
pick off the inhabitants in detail. They crawl towards 
a fort imtil within gunshot and wait, and whoever 
appears gets the first shot. They often make feints 
to draw out the garrison on one side of the fort, while 
some of their numbers surprise another entrance. In 
combat they were brave, in defeat they were dextrous, 
in victory they were cruel. Neither sex nor age nor 
the prisoners were exempt from their tomahawk or 
scalping-knife. When the Indians went off for game 
or into camp, the white man would plough his com, 
or gather his crop, or himt deer, or get up his cattle 
for his own food. Often the women would keep watch 
with rifle in hand while the father or husband drove 
the plough. 

An old settler tells us of the manner in which he 
used to work in those perilous times : 



io8 Historic Indiana 

"On all occasions I carried my rifle, tomahawk, and 
hunting-knife, with a loaded pistol in my belt. When I 
went to plough, I laid my gun on the ploughed ground and 
stuck a stick by it for a mark, so that I could get it quickly 
in case it was needed. I had two good dogs. At night 
I took one into the house, leaving the other out. The 
one outside was expected to give the alarm, which would 
cause the one inside to bark, by which I would be awak- 
ened, having my fire-arms always loaded. During the 
two years I never went from home with any certainty of 
returning. "^ 

Neither was there any certainty of finding his family- 
unmolested upon his return. Many times children 
were sent for wood or water and were captured or 
scalped within sight of the home, and boys were mur- 
dered at the wood-pile. So harassed were the settlers 
that in one of the records of those times we find that 
in 1794 a reward of one hundred and thirty-six 
dollars was offered on the Kentucky shore for every 
Indian scalp having the right ear appended. An 
old army officer of the time has left a graphic de- 
scription of one of the many councils when General 
Clark was trying to negotiate a treaty with the tribes 
in 1785. 

"Three hundred of their finest warriors set ofT in all 
their paint and feathers, filed into the council houses; 
their number and demeanor was altogether unexpected 
and suspicious. The United States stockade mustered 
only seventy men as against their three hundred. In the 
centre of the hall at a little table sat the commissioners, 
and General Clark, the indefatigable scourge of those 
very marauders. On the part of the Indians an old council 
sachem and a war chief took the lead; the latter a tall, 
raw-boned fellow with a bold, villainous look, made a 

' Conversational Reminiscences. 



Indiana Territory 109 

boisterous speech, which operated effectually on the 
passions of the Indians, who set up a prodigious whoop 
at every pause. He concluded by presenting a black and 
white wampum, to signify that they were prepared for 
either event, peace or war. General Clark exhibited the 
same unalterable and careless countenance he had shown 
during the whole scene, his head leaning on his left hand 
and his elbow resting on the table, with very little cere- 
mony. Every Indian immediately started from his seat 
with one of those sudden, simultaneous, and peculiar 
savage sounds, which startle and disconcert the stoutest 
heart, and can neither be described nor forgotten. At 
this juncture Clark rose and the scrutinizing eyes cowed 
at his glance. He stamped his foot on the prostrate and 
insulted symbol of wampum and ordered them to leave 
the hall. They did so involuntarily. They were heard 
all that night debating in the bushes near the fort. The 
chief was for war, the old sachems for peace; the latter 
prevailed, and the next morning they came back and 
sued for peace." ^ 

When General Clark made the conquest of the 
Northwest, it was the fourth white man's government 
the natives had encountered claiming rule over that 
region. With their limited knowledge of the Old 
World and their confused ideas of what Europe really 
was, what wonder that their minds were befogged 
and perplexed over the changes from French King 
to Spanish and from English Monarch to American 
Congress. First one "Big Knife," would solicit them 
as an ally to kill off the other nation, and then the 
next power to gain authority would announce that 
their chief was the "Great Father," and they in turn 
would use the savages against the settlers. 

In recalling the intercourse between the natives and 

» Vincennes, Western Sun, Oct. 21, 1820. 



no Historic Indiana 

the white man, it is interesting to look over the articles 
for which the Indians bartered with the Europeans, 
and the following is the price received in 1775 in ex- 
change for a great tract of land on the Ouabache River, 
well and truly delivered for the use of the several 
tribes: " Four hundred blankets, twenty-two pieces of 
Stroud, two hundred and fifty shirts, twelve gross of 
star gartering, one hundred and fifty pieces of ribbon, 
twenty-four pounds of vermilion, eighteen pairs of 
velvet-laced housings, one piece of malton, fifty-two 
fusils, thirty-five dozen large buck-horn handle knives, 
forty dozen couteau knives, five hundred pounds of 
brass kettles, ten thousand gun flints, six hundred 
pounds of gunpowder, two thousand pounds of lead, 
five hundred pounds of tobacco, forty bushels of salt, 
three thousand pounds of flour, three horses; also 
the following quantities of silverware, viz. : Eleven 
very large arm bands, forty wristbands, six whole 
moons, six half moons, nme ear-wheels, forty-six 
large crosses, twenty-nine hairpins, sixty pair of ear 
bobs, twenty dozen small crosses, twenty dozen nose- 
crosses, and one hundred and ten dozen brooches; 
wherefore we have granted, bargained, sold, altered, 
released, enfeoffed, ratified, and fully confirmed unto 
the said gentlemen, etc." 

Many stories are told of children who were stolen 
by the Indians in Territorial days and carried off, 
sometimes never heard of again. None of these tales 
has a more romantic interest than the well-known 
one of Frances Slocum, who lived as the wife of a Miami 
chief on the Mississinewa River near Peru, Indiana, until 
1847. I^ the far-off country near Wilkesbarre, in the 
month of July and the year 1778, a tribe of Delaware 
Indians, incited by the British troops, swooped down 



Indiana Territory 



III 



on the Wyoming Valley, made a sudden attack upon 
the little settlement, killed the boys that were out 
of doors, and every one rushed for protection. In the 
stampede, little five-year-old Frances was forgotten, 
and knowing there was danger she crawled under the 
stairway to hide from the savages who were ransacking 
the house. Unfortunately^ they spied her little feet stick- 
ing out and pulling her out one of them swung her over 
his shoulders and they carried her and a neighbor boy 
away. Although pursued by soldiers sent out to the res- 
cue, the Indians circumvented the troops, and the child 
disappeared from their ken. Within a month her 
father was murdered by the savages. She was taken 
to New York State near the falls of Niagara and was 
adopted by the chief; dressed out in blanket and 
gay wampum she grew up among the savages, and 
the Indians were good to her. In time there was 
only a hazy memory of her origin. She was called 
the White Rose and had been married to a Delaware 
Indian who proved unworthy of her and later she 
was w-ed by her adopted father to a Miami chief, 
She-buck-o-nah, who was deaf. After the death of 
her adopted father she and her husband left New 
York State and went to the home of his tribe in Indi- 
ana. She had three daughters. Frances's Indian name 
was Ma-con-a-quah. In the year 1839, Mr. George 
Winters, an Indiana artist, went to Deaf Man's Village, 
on the Mississinewa River, near Peru, and painted a 
portrait from life, of Frances Slocum ; and he describes 
her as she appeared in her old age, arrayed as she 
wished to be painted. She was dressed in a red calico 
"pes-mokin" or skirt, figured with large yellow and 
green figures. Her nether limbs were clothed with 
red leggings winged with green ribbon, her feet were 



112 Historic Indiana 

bare and moccasinless. Her forehead was singularly 
interlaced with angular lines, and the muscles of her 
cheeks were ridgy and corded. There were no indi- 
cations of unwonted cares upon her countenance, 
beyond time's influence. Her hair, originally brown, 
was now frosted. The ornamentation of her person 
was very limited. In her ears she wore small silver 
ear bobs. 

Colonel Ewing, a successful trader, who knew the 
Indian language, and had known Frances Slocum by 
her Indian name for many years, was called in one 
day when she was so ill that they thought death was 
near. The nameless longing, of which she had never 
spoken, came over her, and she revealed her life's 
story to Colonel Ewing. She told him she had been 
carried away, and had never heard of her people 
again; that it was far back "before the last two wars." 
She remembered her family name of Slocum, but had 
forgotten her own given name. After recovery from 
this illness, she relapsed into her Indian reserve, and 
told no one of her history. 

Colonel Ewing. wrote an account of the revelation 
made to him by this aged white woman, who was 
known as an Indian; and in 1837 it was published 
in a Lancaster, Pennsylvania, newspaper, with an 
appeal for news of the family. The story became 
widely circulated throughout the State, and finally 
reached the ears of her two brothers and a sister. The 
mother had died thirty years before, grieving to the 
last for the loss of her baby girl. She had spent thou- 
sands of dollars in searching and advertising for the 
child. A purse of five hundred guineas had been 
offered for her restoration. Eleven years after Frances 
was kidnapped an exchange of prisoners was arranged 



Indiana Territory 113 

on the frontier, and Mrs. Slocum journeyed thither 
to see if her child was among the little ones, but she 
had to return home saddened by disappointment. 
She was hot among the white prisoners. For thirty 
years more the sorrowing mother waited and watched 
for some tidings of the lost daughter and died without 
the sight. Her brothers and sister grew to be pros- 
perous citizens and w^ere past middle life before this 
published account of the confession of the aged white 
woman, out among the Miamis, was brought to their 
notice. With impatient speed they arranged to journey 
westward for an interview. It was in the month of 
September, 1837, fifty-nine years after the abduction, 
that the sister and brothers reached the Indian village 
on the Mississinewa. They had to communicate with 
her through an interpreter, for she had entirely lost 
her mother tongue. Her older brother identified her 
beyond doubt by the nail being gone from her left 
front finger, as it had been when she was lost, and 
she recalled her name of Frances when it was spoken 
to her.. They learned that she had always been kindly 
treated by the Indians, and universally respected by 
the savages and white settlers. They begged her to 
return with them, if only for a sight of old home sur- 
roundings, but she resisted their pleadings. She said, 
"I am an old tree and cannot be transplanted." By 
long habit she had become an Indian with precisely 
their manners and customs. It is interesting to learn 
that her changed environment at such an early age 
caused her to grow so exactly like the savage people 
with whom she was thrown. We are told by all that 
she looked entirely like an Indian, talked like one, 
slept, ate, and reasoned like them, and was as stoical 
and reserved. The only difference seemed to be in 



114 Historic Indiana 

the purity of her life and behavior, and the fact that 
she acquired property, and provided for the future, in 
a way unknown among the aborigines. On the day 
after the surprise of the visit of her family, according 
to her promise to them, she rode into town to return 
their visit arrayed in her best barbaric attire and 
accompanied by her daughter and son-in-law and 
carrying a quarter of a deer for a present. She seemed 
to feel that their relations were established and en- 
joyed her visit, but again would not listen to their 
plans to have her return with them, seeming to feel 
no longings for home or kindred or race. With tearful 
adieus on their part and stoical reserve on hers, at- 
tended by her Indian offspring she mounted her pony 
and rode back to her forest home. Frances Slocum's 
history is but one of many tales of Indian kidnapping 
and reprisals which, if they could be given a place, 
would be more thrilling than any in fiction. 

The story is told of a family near Pendleton, who had 
one son of the house who was proverbially slow. He was 
sent by his mother for an armful of fire- wood with the 
admonition, " Now don't be gone seven years." An 
Indian lurking in the woods near by seized the boy 
and carried him off. It was seven years before the 
lad found an opportunity to steal away from the tribe 
and return to his home; as he neared the house, the 
memory of his taking-away came back to him vividly 
and he gathered up an arm-load of wood and carried 
it in to his mother, who had long mourned him as 
dead. A young girl in Ohio County named McClure 
saw all of her kindred tomahawked before her eyes 
and then the Indians carried her off and sold her to 
the British with whom she remained in captivity until 
recaptured at the battle of the Thames. 



Indiana Territory 115 

In the earliest settlement of the Whitewater country, 
one of the Holman families suffered the kidnapping 
of their son by the Indians, who kept the youth for 
seven years. Among the thrilling experiences of his 
captivity was one time when he is said to have refused 
to carry a heavy burden which he had been ordered 
to shoulder. A council of savages was held to deter- 
mine what they should do with him. The usual pun- 
ishment was decided upon, of running the gauntlet 
between two files of men and squaws who were to 
buffet him as he passed or discharge their arrows at 
him. He was too useful to them to be killed and he 
finally escaped from the savages and lived to a good 
old age in southeastern Indiana. 

John Conner, the founder of Connersville, was 
taken by the Shawnee Indians when a mere youth 
and was brought up and trained in Indian life, language, 
and manners. He knew their nature so well that in 
after life he was saved from their treachery while 
travelling in the northern part of the State, by a feel- 
ing that they were ill-intentioned and keeping himself 
awake. His apprehension was justified, for about 
midnight a friendly Indian came to his tent and warned 
him not to be there or his life would be forfeited. 
When dressed in their costume and painted it was 
difficult to distinguish Conner from a real savage. On 
one occasion in later years he came to Andersontown, 
then the lodge of a large band of Indians under Chief 
Anderson. He was dressed and painted as a Shawnee 
and his granddaughter says, w^hen he heard Tecumseh 
was absent, he pretended to be that warrior. As 
is usual with the Indians, he took his seat on a log in 
sight of the Indian encampment, quietly smoked his 
pipe, waiting the action of Anderson and his under 



ii6 Historic Indiana 

chiefs. After an hour he saw approaching him the 
old chief, himself, in full ceremonial dress, smoking 
his pipe. 

"As the old chief walked up to me I rose from my seat, 
looked him in the eyes, we exchanged pipes, and walked 
down to the lodge without exchanging a word. I was 
pointed to a bearskin — took my seat with my back to 
the chiefs. A few minutes later I noticed an Indian, who 
knew me well, eying me closely. I tried to evade his 
glance, when he bawled out in the Indian language, at 
the top of his voice, — interpreted, 'You great Shawnee 
Indian, you big John Conner.' The next moment the 
camp was in a perfect roar of laughter, all yelling over 
the great joke. Chief Anderson ran up to me, jumping, 
throwing off his dignity, 'You great representative of 
Tecumseh,' and burst out in a loud laugh." ^ 

His granddaughter, Mrs. Christian, says that the 
Indians seemed to retain an affection for her grand- 
father, but hated his second wife who was a white 
woman. 

The Indians were always fond of making grave 
declarations in the councils, and many of the set 
speeches were incorporated in and could be unearthed 
from the commissioner's reports to the government, 
when treaties were being arranged. None of these 
orations are more familiar, to those who declaimed 
it when school children fifty years ago, than the stirring 
address of Logan, the Shawnee chief, which was 
translated by General Gibson. 

"I appeal to any white man to say, if he ever entered 
Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if he 
ever came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During 

» " Reminiscences of Sarah C. Christian " in Indiana Magazine of 
History, vol. iii., No. 2, page 87. 



Indiana Territory 117 

the course of the last long bloody war, Logan remained 
idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my 
love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as they 
passed, and said, 'Logan is the friend of the white men.' 
I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the 
injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in 
cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations 
of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There 
runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living 
creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought 
it ; I have killed many ; I have fully glutted my vengeance ; 
for my country, I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do 
not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan 
never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his 
life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one." ^ 

Tecumseh, who came to be the best known chief 
in the Northwest Territory, was not only a leader of 
shrewdness and intelligence but his powers of oratory 
were so great that he fascinated even groups of savages 
that listened to his eloquent speeches, and other chiefs 
were wont to shield their tribes from his influence. 

The effect on the natives of contact with the white 
race was flattering to neither. The historians of the 
early periods of American history have all testified 
to the disastrous results from the sale of firearms 
and liquor, and drink is still the worst enemy of the 
remaining tribes on the reservations. Of the aborigines 
in Indiana Territory, its historian, Mr. Dunn, says: 
"It does not appear that the French civilization had 
any material effect on the manners and customs of 
the Indians in general. Some of them were converted 
to Catholicism, a few undertook something like an 
agricultural life ; as a rule these advances were merely 

1 Dillon, J. B., Hist, of Indiana, page 97. Indianapolis, 1859. 



ii8 Historic Indiana 

grafted on the savagery which still remained."* 
The Reverend Isaac McCoy, a Baptist missionary, 
who, with his faithful wife, labored with the Potta- 
wattomies, the Miamis, and Kickapoos for years and 
taught them agriculture and instructed their children, 
in his last days sighed over their inability to grasp 
the truths — "How few of the Pottawattomie tribes 
have reached the abode of the blessed." In one respect, 
at least, they were infinitely worse off than they were 
before the white man came. They acquired the ap- 
petite for rum, to satisfy which they were ready and 
willing to sacrifice anything they possessed. No tribe 
escaped this curse. The Indians themselves, in their 
sober moments, lamented their weakness, but there was 
no cessation of debauchery. In 1805, when Governor 
Harrison was urging the Territorial Legislature to adopt 
some measure to prevent this drunkenness, he said : 

"You are witnesses to the abuses; you have seen our 
towns crowded with furious and drunken savages; our 
streets flowing with their blood; their arms and clothing 
bartered for the liquor that destroys them; and their 
miserable women and children enduring all of the ex- 
tremities of cold and hunger. So destructive has the 
progress of intemperance been among them, that whole 
villages have been swept away. A miserable remnant is 
all that remains to mark the names and situation of many 
numerous and warlike tribes. In the energetic language 
of one of their orators, it is a dreadful conflagration, which 
spreads misery and desolation through the country and 
threatens the annihilation of the whole race." 2 

Contemplate this picture drawn by Governor 
Denonville in 1690: 

1 Dunn, J. P., Hist, of Indiana, page 122. Boston, 1888. 

2 Burr, S. J., Life and Times of Wm. H. Harrison, page 86. N. Y. 
and Phil., 1840. 






Indiana Territory 119 

"I have witnessed the evils caused by liquor among the 
Indians. It is the horror of horrors. There is no crime 
nor infamy that they do not perpetrate in their excesses. 
A mother throws her child into the fire; noses are bitten 
ofif. It is another hell among them during their orgies, 
which must be seen to be credited. There is no artifice 
that they will not have recourse to, to obtain the means 
of intoxication." ^ 

Notwithstanding all the terrors and sorrows it 
brought to the settlers, the people who trafficked in 
liquor still sold it to the natives just as they do to 
our own people in the present day. Many Indians 
would get drunk to incite themselves to fresh atrocities 
on those they hated. They would sell anything they 
possessed to obtain "fire-water." Said a Shawnee 
chief in 1732: "The Delaware Indians wanted to 
drink the land away"; whereupon we told them, 
"Since some of you are gone to Ohio, we will go there 
also, we hope you will not drink that away too." But 
they did drink much of Ohio away and many other 
lands. Besides their passion for liquor the Indians 
of Territorial Indiana were very fond of games of chance 
and there were many forms of gambling in vogue 
among the various tribes. The game of "Moccasin 
and Bullet" as played by those inveterate gamblers, 
the Delawares, the Miamis, and the Pottawattomies, 
is thus described by Mr. Robert Duncan in his memoirs. 
He well recollected frequently seeing them playing 
the game, which was played in this wise: The profes- 
sional gambler would spread upon a smooth level 
grass plot a large, well-dressed deerskin, upon w^hich 
he would place in a semicircular form, within convenient 

» "N. Y. Col. Doc," vol. ix., quoted on page 123, Dunn's Indiana. 
Boston, 1888. 



I20 Historic Indiana 

reach of the player, a half-dozen newly made moccasins. 
The game consisted in the use of a large-sized bullet 
held in his hands, and shown to those looking on and 
desiring to take part in the game, and then in a hurried 
and very dextrous manner, placing his hand under 
each moccasin, leaving the bullet under one of them. 
Betting was then made as to which one of the moccasins 
the bullet was under. As the manner of shuffling 
the hands under each moccasin was done so rapidly 
and skilfully that it was impossible for the bystanders 
to see under which the bullet was left, it will be seen 
that the chances were largely in favor of the gambler. 

The names of some of the Indians of this time we 
learn from their signatures on old land sales. Twenty 
Canoes, Full Moon, Dogs 'Round the Fire, Dancing 
Feather, Corn Planter, Loaded Man, and Thrown in 
the Water, were among those on record, as ceding their 
titles to the invading settlers. 

A detailed history of the Indian wars in Indiana 
Territory would be wearisome. It was an intermin- 
able maze of attacks by the natives, counter-attacks 
by the whites, in a few months, fresh reprisals, and 
then revenge taken on some other settlement. Often 
there were raids made on some innocent neighborhood 
for an injustice done to Indians miles away. Then 
the militia would be ordered out and the whole border 
"checkered" by the troops, in search of marauders. 
When it is remembered that over forty different 
treaties, in regard to the lands alone, not to mention 
peace pipes that were smoked pledging temporary 
peace, were made with the different tribes between 
1796 and 1840, it is easy to imagine the constant 
conflict during that whole period. If Canada had 
been secured when the Independence of the United 




p^ 



s 



Indiana Territory 121 

States was declared, the situation would have been 
greatly bettered. For many of the savage raids in 
the Northwest were incited by the British who kept 
the Indians constantly stirred up against the colonists. 
As an example, the tribes knew there was to be fighting 
between the two nations, long before the war was 
declared in 181 2. British commanders had summoned 
the chiefs to Canada, and British agents went all over 
the West, distributing presents to the tribes and 
stirring up the bloodthirsty natives against the Amer- 
icans. Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief, died in the Brit- 
ish service, and his brother, " The Prophet," received a 
pension from the British Government until his death 
in 1834, Nor were the French guiltless for they had 
always incited the savages against the English settlers. 
There was continued fighting in scattered localities 
throughout the Territory during the whole of the 
disturbance from 1808 to 181 5, occasioning much 
misery and suffering, but wearisome to recall in detail. 
The battle of Tippecanoe was one of the best remem- 
bered of those Indiana conflicts. It was fought by 
General Harrison and his troops against the Prophet 
Elkswatawa (Loud Voice) who was a brother of the 
Shawnee chief Tecumseh and Kanskaka, triplets born 
at one birth. Tecumseh was a man of vast influence 
with all of the Miami Confederation. Tecumseh, who 
was an Indian of talent, skill, and bravery, and became 
one of the most celebrated aborigines on the conti- 
nent, came down the Wabash attended by a large ret- 
inue of four hundred braves, fully armed, and appearing 
before Governor William Henry Harrison in August, 
1 8 10, made a long speech against allotting particular 
tracts of land to each tribe, and against the late pur- 
chase of lands by the white people. 



122 Historic Indiana 

" I am a warrior," said he, " I am the head of them all, and 
all the warriors will meet together in two or three moons 
from this, then will I call for those chiefs who sold you 
the land and shall know what to do with them. I will 
take no presents from you. By taking goods from you, 
you will hereafter say that with them you purchased 
another piece of land." ^ 

Tecumseh had no claim or title to any of the lands 
which had been sold by the six tribes and their own 
chiefs. For ten days the haughty Shawnee chief and 
Governor Harrison held daily councils, — the Governor 
trying to reason and explain the new conditions to 
the aboriginal mind. Events that followed showed 
that the lengthy pow-wow, and all subsequent warn- 
ings, accomplished nothing. At the close of the visit 
Harrison told Tecumseh that his claims and preten- 
sions would not be acknowledged by the President 
of the United States. "Well," said the astute Indian, 
by his interpreter, "as the Great Chief is to determine 
the matter, I hope the Great Spirit will put sense 
enough in his head to induce him to direct you to give 
up this land. It is true, he is far off and will not be 
injured by this war; he may sit still and drink his 
wine while you and I fight it out." 2 After this, the 
chief and twenty followers, who probably had in- 
tended to make an attack on Vincennes at this time, 
but were overawed by the presence of the United 
States troops, passed on down the river to the South 
to enlist more tribes in a great revolt they had planned 
embracing the whole territory from the Lakes to the 
Gulf. While he was gone on this mission, his brother, 
the Prophet, stirred up the natives and continued the 

» Dillon, John B., Hist, of Ind., page 444. Indianapolis, 1859. 
2 Ibid. 




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Indiana Territory 123 

agitation in the Territory. Two months afterward 
the Governor, in his message to the Territorial Legis- 
lature warned them of the ominous clouds hovering 
over the Wabash; told them of the failure to induce 
the natives to take up agriculture, as game disappeared, 
and settle down on lands of their own. 

" As long as a deer is to be found in these forests they 
will continue to hunt. Are then these extinguishments 
of native titles which are at once so beneficial to the Indian, 
the territory, and the United States to be suspended on 
account of the intrigues of these few individual leaders? 
Is one of the fairest portions of the Globe to remain in a 
state of nature, the haunt of wretched savages, when it 
seems destined by the Creator to give support to a large 
population ? " ^ 

Until the present moment these are the arguments 
of the opposing civilizations. Four hundred years of 
contact since the discovery have not changed the point 
of view of either race. Governor Harrison, ever wise 
in his dealings with the natives, endeavored to break 
up the confederacy of the Indians at the Prophet's 
town. He sent them the following letter addressed 
to the Prophet and his brother: 

"Brothers, listen to me. This is the third year that 
all the white people in this country have been alarmed 
at your proceedings. You invite all the tribes of the North 
and West of you to join against us. You shall not sur- 
prise us as you expect to do. As a friend, I advise you 
to consider well of it. Brothers, do you really think that 
the handful of men you have about you are able to con- 
tend with the seventeen fires (U. S.) or even that the 
whole of the tribes united could contend against the 

• Burr, S. J., Life of Wm. Henry Harrison, page 127. N. Y. and 
Phil., 1840. 



124 Historic Indiana 

Kentucky fire alone? Brothers, I am myself of the Long 
Knife fire; as soon as they hear my voice, you will see 
them pouring forth their swarms of hunting-shirt men, 
as numerous as the mosquitoes on the shores of the Wabash. 
Brothers, take care of their stings. It is not our wish to 
hurt you. With regard to the lands, it is in the hands 
of the President; if you wish to go and see him, I will 
supply you with the means." ^ 

For months these negotiations were kept up, the 
Indians denying the threatened uprising and promising 
that they would send messengers among the tribes to 
prevent depredations. At the same time the Prophet 
was drawing the natives to his standard. In the 
autumn the signs grew ominous and Governor Har- 
rison having lost hopes of a peaceful solution of dif- 
ficulties determined upon an aggressive policy. He, 
with a force of troops, marched northward from 
Vincennes toward the Prophet's town to settle the 
question before winter set in, and ere Tecumseh should 
return from the South, The malign influence of the 
Prophet had reached all the tribes. In a speech to 
his followers, the Prophet had declared that his toma- 
hawk was up against the whites, that nothing would 
induce him to take it down, unless the wrongs of the 
Indians about their lands were redressed. When 
Governor Harrison and his troops drew near the 
Indian forces the Prophet sent out a chief to call 
them to halt. Governor Harrison explained that he 
had no intention of attacking him, until he dis- 
covered that they would not comply with his demands. 
"At present my object is to find a good piece of 
ground to encamp on, where we can get wood and 

' Burr, S. J., Life of Win. Henry Harrison, page 127. N. Y. and 

Phil., 1840. 



Indiana Territory 125 

water." ^ The chief pointed out an oak grove which has 
since become so famous. It was on a table-land of the 
lower ground, which the troops settled on, and mutual 
promises were made for a suspension of hostilities 
until there was an interview on the following day, 
when General Harrison hoped to make peace settle- 
ments. Nevertheless, the army encamped in battle 
array and slept on their arms, for Governor Harrison 
was an old Indian fighter and knew their ways. He 
was none too wary. Before sunrise the Indians at- 
tacked so suddenly that they were in the camp before 
many of the soldiers could get out of their tents, and 
the battle of November 7, 181 1, was on. The Prophet 
stood on high ground and chanted war songs in a 
loud voice and assured his followers of victory. When 
they were vanquished and the day was lost, they 
lost faith in the Prophet, deserted his standard, and 
he slipped away from the vengeance of the whites 
and joined the Wyandots. 

It was on the return march from this battle of Tip- 
pecanoe that the soldiers from Kentucky gathered the 
seed of the blue grass which they found growing in 
Indiana, and carried it home with them thinking it 
was a superior variety, because it satisfied the hunger 
of their horses so that they would not eat their corn. 
It flourished so well on the limestone soil of central 
Kentucky that it made that State famous. Among 
the immediate results of the battle of Tippecanoe 
were the signal destruction of the Prophet's influence 
over the tribes, their dispersion from their settlements 
on that river, the complete defeat of chief Tecumseh's 
designs for a general uprising of all the allied tribes, 

1 Burr, S. J., Life of Wm. Henry, Harrison, page 142. N. Y. and 
Phil., 1840. 



126 Historic Indiana 

and a little relief to the frontier from the incursions 
of the savages. 

An appreciation of William Henry Harrison's official 
services to Indiana Territory belongs in its history. 
He understood how to deal with the Indians and by 
his victories in the border forays at Tippecanoe, at 
Fort Meigs, and jointly with Lieutenant Perry in 
making peace, he made it possible for the settlements 
throughout the whole Ohio Valley to enjoy a measure 
of safety. It is vastly to his honor that in the hotly 
contested campaign of 1840, when he was the Presi- 
dential candidate, it was never intimated that any 
taint of misapplied funds, or dishonest dealings could 
be attached to his administration, either as a com- 
missioner, a military officer, or as an Executive. His 
zeal in the service and fidelity to the Territory made 
for General Harrison a most honorable record. 

It is always to be remembered, in the annals of these 
Territorial days in Indiana, that the relief accomplished 
by any battle was temporary, that there would often 
be an outbreak in some other section in a short time. 
For example, a distressing massacre occurred in the 
following year, within the present limits of Scott 
County. In 18 12, there was a place that was called 
the Pigeon Roost settlement. It consisted of a few 
families, isolated from other settlements, by a distance 
of four or five miles. During the afternoon of the 
third of September two of the men, who were out 
hunting for "bee trees" in the forest, about two miles 
from home, were surprised and killed by a party of 
Indians, consisting of ten or twelve warriors, mostly 
Shawnees, who afterwards attacked the settlement and 
in an hour, about sunset, killed one man, five women, 
and sixteen children, after a determined defence on 



Indiana Territory 127 

the part of the few settlers. As soon as it grew dark 
two men, one woman, and five children eluded the 
savages, struck out through the woods, and by day- 
light reached the home of a neighbor six miles distant. 
The militia went to the scene of the disaster only 
to find the houses a smoking ruin and the victims 
of the savage warfare burned in their cabins. They 
buried the murdered persons in one grave on the spot 
where they died, and which they had suffered so much 
to attain. 

The same month of the disaster of the "Pigeon 
Roost" settlement, Fort Wayne, which was more 
than a hundred miles away, was surrounded and held 
until the troops from far-off Ohio and Kentucky 
relieved it by dispersing the savages. Again, two 
months later, troops had to be sent to the Missis- 
sinewa River, to destroy the Miami villages and dis- 
perse those warlike bands. Only a few of the many 
conflicts between the natives and the white settlers 
can be recounted here. Indeed the alarms were so 
frequent that in 181 2 the Territorial Legislature did 
not convene in regular session because so many of the 
members of that body were on military duty. Mr. 
Dillon says that twenty battle-fields and the ashes 
of fifty Indian towns are among the memorials of 
that triumph of civilized man in this region. The 
deaths and desolate homes of the white people have 
never been fully enumerated. Their graves are un- 
marked. Near their forest homes many times the 
ashes of both were found together and told the tale. 
The whole situation was deplorable, and continued so 
for years, but enough has been recounted for later 
generations to appreciate the conditions of living in 
Indiana when it was a Territory. Many interesting 



128 Historic Indiana 

details of the encounters with the Indians in this 
particular State may be found in Colonel Cockrum's 
Pioneer History of Indiana. Throughout the con- 
tinent the white man was a usurper from the Indian's 
standpoint, whether the lands were purchased or 
appropriated. It was their hunting ground they 
wanted preserved. It has been said that the 
English race of settlers extinguished the Indian 
title by the simple expedient of extinguishing the 
Indian. All of the European races who came in 
must ever stand accused of many violations of faith 
with the natives, and of horrible retaliations for all 
the savage atrocities committed by the red man. 

Unless the whole continent was to be retained as 
a vast hunting ground, and forever closed to the over- 
crowded population of the rest of the world, border 
war was inevitable. The tribes had always battled 
among themselves for the same reason, and constantly 
depleted their own race in appalling conflicts for their 
" game preserves." If the white race finally conquered, 
it was not an easy victory, as we have seen. 

In Indiana Territory the Indians resisted the advance 
inch by inch. Pleadings, protestations, strategy, cun- 
ning, cruelty, and massacre were tried to maintain 
their sway in the land. It is needless now to deplore 
or recriminate for the part our nation played in the 
Indian question. Like negro slavery, it was instituted 
by the different European nations who started the 
settlement of this continent before there was any 
American government. English, Spanish, French, and 
Dutch trafficked in slaves, and pushed the Indians 
back long before the Republic existed. We may 
regret it, deplore it, and be thankful that slavery 
finally was abolished ; but the inception of both Indian 



Indiana Territory 129 

and negro injustice was European, and the American 
nation inherited the two problems with the domain. 
We must shoulder our own share of the responsibility 
for mistakes in trying to adjust the difficult relations 
between the different civilizations, but Europe must 
share with us the beginning of sorrows. Neither of 
the two dark races has been able to develop suf- 
ficiently to ' ' catch step ' ' with the descendants of the 
Europeans. An ironical form of the Indian's retali- 
ation for the loss of domain might be recognized in 
the money loss to the world by his introduction of 
the use of tobacco. Possibly the living descendants 
of the departed braves could spend the rest of their 
days in computing the cost, to the nations, of the 
wealth " gone up in smoke" from the use of the weed 
made known to the white man on the banks of the 
James. It might be a grim satisfaction to Big Chief, 
fretting on Western " farms in severalty," to reflect that, 
at an ever-increasing ratio, his mild poison is absorbing 
the revenues of the European races; that the value 
of his lost lands will be a mere bagatelle, compared 
with the cost of the tobacco which is being consumed 
at the rate of four hundred million dollars a year, 
within that same domain. 

Notwithstanding the continued Indian troubles, the 
Northwest Territory increased in population and in 
material wealth. After the Revolutionary War, in 
1785 the disbanded soldiers began drifting westward 
in large numbers. After Virginia and the other Atlantic 
colonies had ceded their individual claims to the 
Federal Government, Congress completed the organi- 
zation of the lands north of the Ohio and east of 
the Alleghanies into the tract know^n officially as 
the Northwest Territory, and adopted the famous 



130 Historic Indiana 

" Ordinance of 1787 " for its government. In the year 
1800, with a population of 4700 white people, an 
independent territory, extending to the Mississippi 
River, and called Indiana, was organized with William 
Henry Harrison as Governor. Four years later it was 
granted a Representative in Congress. In 1808, when 
the population had increased to 17,000, the part 
east of the Wabash River was divided from Illinois. 
In 1816, Indiana was admitted into the Union. " She 
has come in free," was the glad word carried from 
hamlet to village. This meant that slavery existed 
on this soil, in the early history of Indiana. Slaves 
were brought with the settlers from the South, others 
were sold "up the river" by the Spanish; and Louis 
of France, by a royal ordinance in 1721, had authorized 
the importation of negro slaves into his territory, 
and slaves were still held by Americans who had 
come from the South. When the United States secured 
control of the territory the struggle began between 
those who wished slavery continued within its borders, 
and those who strenuously opposed it. Mr. J. P. 
Dunn, in his interesting and exhaustive history of 
Indiana as a Territory, and its redemption from sla- 
very, covers every phase of the discussion the reader 
may wish to investigate. He gives due weight to the 
historical fact that the local slavery question was 
the paramount political influence in Indiana up to the 
time of the organization of the State government ; and 
he brings clearly to light the causes which produced 
the pro-slavery feeling, and the difficulties which the 
anti-slavery sentiment was obliged to overcome. Here 
it will suffice to recall that, as the French settlers 
already had slaves under the crown, which they brought 
up the river upon their return from the trading trips 




William Henry Harrison. 

From an engraving after the painting by Chappel. 



Indiana Territory 131 

to New Orleans, it was natural that the early pioneers 
from the South who had slaves should retain them, 
it still being in accordance with the law. At the same 
time there had come into the Territory many Quakers, 
who always discountenanced slavery; and large num- 
bers of the citizens from the South, who had left slave 
States at great sacrifice, on account of their disap- 
proval of slavery, many of whom were of Huguenot 
descent, had been joined by people from New England. 
These elements made a strong minority, who persisted 
in a conscientious and continued fight against per- 
petuating the practice in the new Territory. It is a 
fact that, when the constitution for the new State 
was adopted by the commission appointed for that 
purpose, freedom won by only two votes! A trav- 
eller through Indiana at this time wrote home: 
"These people are forming a State government. The 
question in all its magnitude, whether it should be a 
slave-holding State or not, is just now agitating. 
Many fierce spirits talked about resistance with blood, 
but the preponderance of more sober views and 
habits of order and quietness prevailed." Indiana 
came in as a free State. 

One of the perplexing and vexatious things in 
frontier life was the frauds practised in entering 
claims to the public lands. The times were so threat- 
ening in 1804 that the Commissioners, appointed to 
adjust the land titles for the Federal Government, 
in closing their report, said: "We close this melancholy 
picture of human depravity by rendering our de- 
vout acknowledgment that it has pleased Divine 
Providence to preserve us both from legal murder 
and private assassination." ^ The rapacity of land 

» Dillon, J. B., History of Indiana, p. 434. Indianapolis, 1859. 



132 Historic Indiana 

speculators, the dishonesty of land agents, and the grasp- 
ing covetousness of some settlers kept up a constant 
source of hardship and discontent. Soldiers and the 
earlier inhabitants sometimes sold their lands to 
cunning speculators as low as thirty cents an acre, 
and then were paid in bogus scrip. The very first 
settlers came into the Territory before there were any 
surveys, and had to prove up after the government 
was ready to grant a title. Actual settlers tried to 
adjust their selections without dissensions or bidding 
against each other, sometimes casting lots to decide 
who should secure a certain tract. We read in an 
old journal that "the settlers tell foreign capitalists 
to hold off till they enter the tract they have already 
settled upon, and that then they may pitch in; that 
there will be land enough for all. If a speculator 
makes a bid or shows a disposition to take a settler's 
claim from him, he soon sees the whites of a score of 
eyes. A few days of public sale sufficed to relieve 
hundreds of their cash, but they secured their land, 
which will serve as a basis for their future wealth and 
prosperity, sure as time's gentle progress makes a 
calf an ox." Some speculators swept whole townships 
at a purchase. The fortunes of many who were after- 
wards the rich men of Indiana were made by securing 
cheap government lands, and not "signing deeds." The 
story is told by Sanford Cox of a clever ruse played 
upon land speculators that were constantly scouring 
the coimtry. 

" A man who owned a claim on Tippecanoe River, near 
Pretty Prairie, fearing that some one of the numerous 
land hunters might enter the land he had settled upon 
before he could raise the money to buy it, seeing one day 
a cavalcade of land hunters riding in the direction of his 



Indiana Territory 133 

claim, mounted his horse and started off at full speed to 
meet them, swinging his hat and shouting at the top of 
his voice: ' Indians! Indians! The woods are full of them, 
murdering and scalping all before them ! ' They paused 
a moment, but he cried: 'Help! Longlois, — Cicots, help! ' 
They turned and fled, giving the alarm to the settlements, 
and never came back. As soon as the alarmer could 
gather up money enough, he slipped down to the land- 
office town, and entered his land, chuckling in his sleeve 
over outwitting the land hunters. ' ' ^ 

At one time " land spies " and "land sharks " were cir- 
cumvented by a whole neighborhood of settlers dressing 
up like Indians and making a noisy attempt to sur- 
round the speculators, who hastily left and spread 
the alarm of savages coming. 

In December, 181 1, the month after the battle of 
Tippecanoe, Territorial Indiana and the whole Mis- 
sissippi Valley experienced the terrors of an earth- 
quake. It was the first disturbance of that character 
since the country had been explored, and no seismic 
phenomena have ever been so violent in the Middle 
West since. The first shock occurred the fifteenth of 
December, and they were repeated at intervals for two 
or three months. A resident of the valley at that 
time wrote that the shocks of these earthquakes must 
have equalled, in their terrible upheavings of the earth, 
anything of the kind that has been recorded. We 
are accustomed to measure this by the buildings over- 
turned and the mortality that resulted, but here the 
country was thinly settled. The houses, fortunately, 
were of logs, the most difficult to overturn that could 
be constructed. Yet, as it was, whole tracts of land 
were plunged into the river. This was the "Great 

! Cox. Sanford C, Old Settlers, p. 53. La Fayette, i860. 



134 Historic Indiana 

Shake" of 1811, as it was felt in the centre of the 
district affected. Up and down the tributary rivers 
the terror was only less felt, as the settlements w^ere 
distant from that centre. Indiana Territory had so 
few towns, of any size, at that time that the experience 
came mostly to cabin settlements and solitary home- 
steaders in their isolated clearings. 

An interesting fact in connection with the Mississippi 
River intrigues was that in the year 1806 the Ter- 
ritory of Indiana had many valuable accessions, in 
the deluded followers of Aaron Burr. These learned 
on their way down the Ohio that Burr's followers were 
regarded as traitors by the government; that if they 
proceeded farther toward the Mississippi they would 
be seized by soldiers, who had been detailed to watch 
the river and make arrests of the adherents of Burr. 
These deluded people saw the dreams of empire, with 
which that conspirator had enticed them away from 
their homes, to join with him in his scheme of establish- 
ing a great inland, independent government, vanish 
into an illegal myth. To protect themselves, they 
left the rivers and retired into the fastnesses of southern 
Indiana, where they began anew, under great hard- 
ships, to make homes for themselves. They be- 
came valuable settlers, but cherished no regard for 
that arch schemer, who lured so many from their old 
habitations. 

We have already recounted, in the chapter on Spanish 
dominion, how in 1803, shortly after Indiana attained 
the rank of separate Territorial government, the long- 
drawn question of the free navigation of the Missis- 
sippi River, whereby the commerce of the Wabash 
and the Ohio might have an outlet, was finally settled 
by Napoleon selling the whole of Louisiana Territory 



Indiana Territory 135 

to the American Government. During these trouble- 
some times on the frontier, the settlers upbraided the 
New Englanders for their indifference to the troubles 
of the West. They wrote to them that 

" three times the quantity of tobacco and corn can be 
raised on an acre here than can be within the settlements 
on the east side of the mountains, and with less cultivation. 
Do you think to prevent the emigration from a barren 
country, loaded with taxes, to the most luxurious and 
fertile soil in the world? We are determined that the 
Spaniards shall not trade up the river, if they will not 
let us trade down it. In case we are not succored by the 
United States, our allegiance will be thrown off and some 
other power applied to. Great Britain stands ready with 
open arms to receive and support our claims. When once 
re-united to them, 'Farewell, a long farewell' to all your 
boasted greatness. You are as ignorant of this country 
as Great Britain was of America." ^ 

This whole question, which had annoyed the settlers 
for two decades, we dispose of in a few paragraphs, 
but their vexations had been most disheartening, and 
they hailed the opening of the river with rejoicing. 

Seemingly this would have ended forever the battles 
of the river, but nine years afterwards, in the War 
of 181 2 between the United States and Great Britain, 
the Western border was again disturbed and Indiana's 
commerce congested by the blockade of New Orleans, 
whereby it was intended to make a permanent con- 
quest of the lower Mississippi, and to secure for Great 
Britain in perpetuity the western bank of the river. 
Says Fiske: "In order to effect all this, it seemed 
necessary to inflict upon the Americans one crushing 
and humiliating defeat. That this could be done few 

' Ind. Magazine of History, 1906, vol. ii. 



136 Historic Indiana 

Englishmen doubted, and so confident was the ex- 
pectation of victory that Governors and Command- 
ants for the towns along the Mississippi River were 
actually appointed and sent out in the fleet." ^ Thus 
we see the great significance to the Indiana settlers, 
clustered along the Ohio and Wabash with all their 
tributary streams, of the great victory gained by 
Andrew Jackson at New Orleans, with his army 
of scarcely six thousand sturdy frontiersmen from 
the valley territory, when he met a force of twelve 
thousand British regulars on that December day in 
1814. 

"The faultless frontier marksmen, who thought nothing 
of bringing down a squirrel from the top of the tallest 
tree, wasted very few shots indeed. In just twenty-five 
minutes the British were in full retreat, leaving 2600 of 
their number killed and wounded. The American loss 
was only eight killed and thirteen wounded, for the enemy 
were mowed down too quickly to return an effective fire. 
This victory, like the three last naval victories of the 
war, occurred after peace had been made by our Com- 
missioners at Ghent. Nevertheless, no American can 
regret that the battle was fought. Not only the insolence 
and rapacity of Great Britain had richly deserved casti- 
gation, but Jackson's victory decided that henceforth the 
Mississippi Valley belonged indisputably to the people of 
the United States." 2 

And it was the last struggle with a foreign power for 
its possession. 

The state of advancement in Indiana at this time 
may be understood from some passages in the Gov- 

1 Fiske, John, Essays, Historical and Literary, vol. i., " Andrew 
Jackson," p. 248. New York, 1902. 

2 Ibid., page 251. 



{ 




The Old State House at Corydon, Indiana. 
From a photograph by Mowrer. 



Indiana Territory 137 

ernor's message to the Territorial Legislature when 
it met in 1813. Governor Posey rehearsed the causes 
of the war then going on with England, and then 
urged the Assembly to pass laws for raising revenues 
for roads and schools and the reorganization of the 
militia for better protection against the Indians! In 
the formal response of the Legislature, that august 
body of pioneers, clad in deerskin, replied in im- 
perious language, calling attention to the fact that 
the American nation had been forced into the war 
by the indignities practised on her by Great Britain, 
and added: "With you, Sir, we abhor that cringing 
and detestable policy which would submit to British 
aggression, and cherish a hostile colony — a scourge 
on our borders. We are astonished at the mistaken 
and obstinate policy of the New England States, in 
opposing the junction of the Canadas to the Union." ^ 
After living under the Territorial form of govern- 
ment for seven years. Congress granted Indiana the 
right to call a convention for the purpose of framing 
a constitution preparatory to admission into the Union 
of States. This convention assembled in the little 
town of Corydon, which had just been made the 
capital. It was in the month of June. In southern 
Indiana, when the corn is growing finely, the tempera- 
ture can be like the torrid zone. The honorable body 
which had assembled for the work found such weather 
prevailing, and held most of the sessions under a great 
spreading elm-tree, which still stands. The limbs of 
this tree cover nearly one hundred and twenty-five 
feet in diameter, and its shade was gratefully cool 
to the ardent law-makers who were assembled to 
close the' Territorial stage of her history. 

' Dillon, J. B., History of Indiana, page 529. Cincinnati, 1858. 



138 Historic Indiana 

With the opening of the nineteenth century, Indi- 
ana was to come into the galaxy of States, nearly 
a century and a half after La Salle revealed her fertile 
lands and streams to the people of the other con- 
tinent, and under conditions daily growing more 
favorable to peaceful occupancy. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE NEW STATE 1816 

INDIANA Territory, as well as the others west of 
the intervening Alleghany Mountains, was a long 
distance from the immediate watch-care of the 
Central Government, and in common with Territories 
at the present day felt the delays and the indifference 
to its necessities and peculiar conditions. In 1815, 
Congress received a petition from the settlers of Indiana, 
reciting that they now had 60,000 white inhabitants 
within their borders, and asking that honorable body 
to order an election for representatives to form a State 
government; and very significantly expressing at the 
same time the hope that if a State was organized, 
it would be permitted to be a free and not a slave 
State. " Let us be on our guard when our convention 
men are chosen," wrote good old Dennis Pennington, 
in 1 81 5, "that they may be men opposed to slavery." 
The following April, a bill favorable to the organiza- 
tion of a new State was passed in Congress, and a 
month later the election occurred. The commission 
sat in June to frame the constitution. Of those hardy 
frontiersmen who were to assume the responsibilities of 
forecasting the future commonwealth, Mr. Dillon says: 

"The convention that formed the first constitution of 
the State of Indiana was composed mainly of clear-headed. 

139 



I40 Historic Indiana 

unpretending men of common-sense, whose patriotism 
was unquestionable and whose morals were fair. Their 
familiarity with the theories of the Declaration of In- 
dependence — their Territorial experience under the pro- 
vision of the Ordinance of 1787 — and their knowledge 
of the principles of the Constitution of the United States 
were sufificient, when combined, to lighten materially their 
labors in the great work of forming a constitution for a 
new State." ^ 

This is really a modest estimate of the commission, 
when we compare the instrument which they prepared 
with State measures originated by others, even in this 
day! The new constitution was comprehensive, digni- 
fied, and so liberal in its provisions for the future 
that it was a half century in advance of the times. It 
declared for reform and not vengeance, as the object 
of State punishment for crimes; it imposed on future 
Legislatures the requirement of providing asylums for 
the unfortunate; it prohibited the establishment of 
banks for the purpose of issuing bills of credit, or 
bills payable to order or bearer, except the regular 
State bank and its branches ; and it is claimed that, 
previous to Indiana, no State had in its constitution 
declared for a graduated system of schools, extending 
from the district schools to the university, equally 
open to all, on the basis of gratuitous instruction. 
The legislation of the next thirty-five years did not 
accomplish the ideal of these early framers of the first 
constitution in regard to education, and it was over 
three quarters of a century before the penal code of 
the State contained as enlightened provisions as they 
had outlined. 

' Dillon, J. B., History of Indiana, page 559. Cincinnati, 1858, 



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The New State — 1816 141 

As an illustration of the primitive conditions which 
prevailed at that date, it is recalled that the com- 
mission held its sessions imder a great elm in the yard, 
and the chairman of the Constitutional Commission, 
who was also the builder that was erecting the new 
State-house, w^as often called from hammer and trowel, 
to decide upon questions of State. 

The duties of Statehood were assumed by thirteen 
sparsely settled counties lying along the Ohio and the 
southern part of the Wabash River. Less than one- 
fourth of the territory had been ceded to the white 
race. Two-thirds of the domain was still the hunting- 
ground of the Indians. 

The men who had controlled political affairs during 
the Territorial time led in the organization of the 
State and portioned the offices and honors among them- 
selves, very much after the present fashion in politics. 
Jonathan Jennings became Governor. James Noble 
and Walter Taylor were elected to the United States 
Senate, and Williams Hendricks went to Congress. 
The first Assembly after the State was admitted into 
the Union convened in the new capital at Corydon on 
November 4, 181 6. Governor Jennings's message to 
the first General Assembly was full of appreciation 
of the dignity and importance of the occasion, and the 
responsibilities of the Legislature in striking a high plane 
for their deliberations and enactments. An idea of 
the issues of the day may be gleaned from the points 
brought out in his address, some of which still have 
a familiar ring, and others passed with the passing of 
the pioneer conditions. He pointed out the necessity 
of providing for general education ; urged the necessity 
for better roads; that certainty of punishment must 
be established, as the surest way of preventing crime. 



142 Historic Indiana 

He urged better protection from the Indians, and that 
there was need of laws prohibiting any attempts to 
seize and carry into bondage persons of color legally 
entitled to their freedom, and at the same time laws 
to prevent slaves, from elsewhere, seeking refuge 
within the limits of the State. 

The tax rates for the year of admission into the 
Union are also interesting as an index of the times. 
For each one hundred acres of best land, the tax was 
one dollar. For each bond-servant over twelve years 
of age, three dollars ; thirty-seven cents for each horse 
or mule. For each ferry across streams, from five 
to twenty dollars. Town lots were assessed fifty 
cents ; and each "pleasure carriage" with two wheels, 
one dollar; four wheels, one dollar and a quarter; each 
silver watch, twenty-five cents; gold watch, fifty cents; 
for every billiard table, fifty dollars. We wonder of 
how many the crude wilderness towns could boast? 

At this time there was not a mile of turnpike, plank 
road, or canal in the State! The Indian trails, which 
could only be travelled by a rider on horseback, were 
the only roads outside of the towns. It took the 
members elected to the National Congress twenty-eight 
days to travel on horseback to reach the sessions of that 
body. 

The description of the diminutive county towns, 
in William Dudley Foulke's very interesting biography 
of Governor Oliver P. Morton, gives the reader a 
graphic picture of the county seat in that early time. 
He says that 

"thither flocked the men of the county upon all great 
occasions, to the trials and to the musters. They brought 
with them their own food in their wagons or saddle-bags, 
and sought the shelter of the Court-house or of the great 



The New State — 1816 143 

trees near by. The men were clad in deerskin trousers, 
moccasins, and blue homespun hunting-shirts, with a belt 
to which hung a tobacco pouch made of polecat skin. 
The women wore gowns of homespun cotton, with calico 
or gingham sun-bonnet. The country folks came to town 
on horseback, the women sitting behind the men on the 
same horse." ^ 

At the same time the people in the towns were 
surrounding themselves with better homes and more 
of the conveniences of life. The impetus given to the 
development of the State, by having its own govern- 
ment and increased security from Indian raids, may 
be realized when it is recalled that the population 
increased eighty-seven thousand in the next four 
years. By 1820, there were 147,178 people in the 
State. New settlements were founded, homes rebuilt 
or enlarged, schoolhouses and churches built, orchards 
planted, and roads hewn through the forest. 

There were few newspapers anywhere in that day, 
and on the border candidates for office were wont 
to issue flaming handbills, and broadsides, setting 
forth their own virtues, and the drawbacks from the 
election of their opponents. There were no caucuses 
or conventions then. Every candidate brought him- 
self out and ran on his own merits. Modesty generally 
was its own reward! Then, the best men succeeded 
in capturing office by sounding their own praises from 
the stump. It really was stump-speaking in those 
primitive times. The political candidate would round 
up a few voters at a battalion muster on training-day 
and harangue them ; or, appoint a meeting, where there 
were a few logs in a clearing for the benches, on which 
the choppers gathered to listen, and a broad stump 

' Foulke, Wm. D., Life of Oliver P. Morton. Indianapolis, 1900. 



144 Historic Indiana 

for the speaker, and you had a "log convention," 
such as downed slavery in the new Territory. Many 
amusing stories are told of these frontier campaigns. 
When Jonathan Jennings, who afterwards was the 
first Governor of the State, was running for Congress 
against Mr. Randolph, they both w^nt about among the 
different neighborhoods 'lectioneering. Mr. Dunn tells 
the story of Mr. Randolph coming to a log-rolling on 
horseback, being received by Farmer Ruse with the 
salutation, "'Light you down"; he dismounted, and 
after chatting a few minutes was asked into the house. 
Randolph accepted the invitation, and, after visiting 
with the women folks a short time, rode away. On the 
next day Jennings came, who had a similar reception, 
but to the invitation to repair to the house, he replied, 
"Send a boy up with my horse and I '11 help roll," 
and help he did until the work was finished, and then 
he threw the maul and pitched quoits with the men, 
taking care to let them outdo him, although he was 
very strong and well skilled in the sports and work of 
frontier farmers. So he went from house to house. 
People used to treasure up their anecdotes of his doings 
in his campaign, and how he would take a scythe and 
keep ahead of half a dozen mowers. 

Captain Lemake, with his keen sense of humor, has 
told in his Reminiscences of an Indianian a very 
amusing story of a canvass for votes which he made in 
his youth. It w^as in a contest for sheriff of Vander- 
burg County to which he had been nominated, against 
his vigorous protest. 

"I found this race a bitterly contested fight and no 
comfortably padded job. Through the out townships, 
over rough and muddy roads, in buggy and on horse- 
back, day and night I beat the bush. And all the 



The New State — 1816 145 

time there rang in my ears the professional office-seeker's 

chant: 

He greets the women with courtly grace, 

And kisses the babies' dirty face ; 

He calls to the fence the farmer at work, 

And bores the merchant, and bores the clerk; 

The blacksmith while his anvil rings, 

He greets. And this is the song he sings: 

'Howdy, howdy, howdy do? 
How is your wife, and how are you? 
Ah ! it fits my fist as no other can. 
The horny hand of the working-man.' 

" One day when riding along a country road looking 
for voters, I spied a dilapidated old Reuben plowing a 
field. No sooner had I tied my horse than the intelligent 
agriculturist left his plow and came over to the fence. 
After shaking his gnarly claw in the hearty manner that 
candidates have, I began my spiel. He listened patiently 
until I got through, and then with hems and haws said: 
'Well, Cap, I 'd like to vote for you firstrate, but the 
other fellow is sort o' kin to me and I don't like to vote 
agin him.' Rather taken back, I queried what relation- 
ship he claimed with my opponent; when he, with subdued 
pride, drawled out, 'Well I got an idee that he 's the father 
of my oldest boy.' " ^ 

Politicians were often the butt of the proverbial 
Hoosier humor, and on account of it sometimes lost 
their election. Of one politician it was said that there 
was no tangible objection to him, but it was rumored 
that he could see a short rich man over the head of a 
tall poor man. The same humor sometimes came 
out in plea for office, as when a candidate for justice 
of peace boasted that he "had been sued on every 

' Lemcke, J. A., Reminiscences of an Indianian, page 66. Indian- 
apolis, 1905. 



146 Historic Indiana 

section of the statutes, and ought to know all about 
the law." 

Political influence and office went in the olden time, 
as much as now, to the lawyers; commercial life had 
a narrower horizon in those days than at present, and 
the young men of wit, who were selecting a career, 
turned very often to the profession of law. In the 
reminiscences of one of these men, who figured largely 
in the early bar of Indiana, he says that the lawyers 
were the most important personages in the country. 
They were universally called " 'squires" by old and 
young. Queues were much the fashion, and nothing 
was more common than to see one of these 'squires 
with a queue three feet long, tied from head to tip 
in an eel skin, walking in evident superiority, in his 
own estimation, among the people in the court-yard, 
sounding the public mind as to his prospects as a can- 
didate for the Legislature. The crowds of that day 
thought the holding of court a great affair. The 
people came hundreds of miles to see the judges and 
hear the lawyers plead, as they called it. When court 
adjourned, the people returned to their homes and 
told their children of the eloquence of the attorney. 

The dress of the prominent men of this time was of 
blue cloth with brass buttons, buff small-clothes, a' 
white vest, and fine linen ruffled shirts, the hair in a 
queue, and the hat of beaver. A list of prices charged 
for tailor's work in 181 6 mentions three dollars as 
the charge for making a gentleman's cloak, five-fifty 
for a surtout, two-seventy-five for hussars, three 
dollars for shirrivallies, two-fifty for short breeches, 
and five dollars for making a dragoon's coat. If mother 
did the sewing, as in most families at that time she 
did, the tailor would cut a man's coat for a dollar, and 



The New State — 1816 147 

the waistcoat and pantaloons for thirty-seven and 
a half cents each. 

The court-houses in those days were built of logs, 
and the sheriffs seem to have been selected as officials, 
on account of their fine voices to call the jurors and 
witnesses from the woods to the door of the court 
building, and their ability to run down and catch 
offenders. The condition under which justice was 
dispensed is reflected in the memory of a prosecuting 
attorney in the Third District. He says: 

' ' We rode the circuit on horseback. There were no bridges 
over the streams, but we rode good swimming horses, and 
never faltered for high water, but plunged in and always 
found the opposite side somehow. The great variety of 
trials and incidents in the circuit gave to the life of a 
travelling attorney an interest that we all relished exceed- 
ingly. There was no dyspepsia, no gout, no ennui, no 
neuralgia. All was good humor, fine jokes well received, 
good appetites and sound sleeping, cheerful landlords and 
good-natured landladies at the head of the tables in the 
taverns. We rode first-class horses, costing from fifty to 
ninety dollars, the highest price. They were trained to 
travel on cross-pole and to swim the creeks." 

The story of the change of capitals is a reflection 
of the development of the Territory from the French 
trading era through American settlement to a real- 
ization of future conditions, when the whole State 
should be inhabited. Vincennes was one of the oldest 
towns in the western part of the continent. We know 
it first as the French trading-post. The antiquity 
is not so great as the lack of written history. Judge 
Law claimed 17 10 as the year of the building of the 
fort, and that Father Mermat was the first mission- 
ary, and was sent to the post in 1712. Mr. Myers 



148 Historic Indiana 

has made most interesting researches into the sub- 
ject, and Mr. Dunn, after a careful survey of all of 
the evidence obtainable, places the first foundation 
of a town in Indiana at the military post at Vincennes, 
about the year 1731. From the first it was included 
by the French Government in the Province of Louisi- 
ana; it was located on the east bank of the Wabash 
amidst broad prairies. As time went on, English- 
speaking people were added to the original French 
inhabitants, and when the American Congress granted 
Territorial government Vincennes was designated as 
the little capital, and the Legislature sat there until 
1814. Governor William Henry Harrison had oc- 
cupied this town as his official residence, while ruler 
of the Northwest Territory. The Vincennes University 
was granted a charter in 1807, and with it authority 
to raise by lottery twenty thousand dollars for its 
establishment and maintenance. In that time lot- 
teries constituted a very prevalent way of raising funds 
with which to build churches and schools, to pave 
the streets, to construct turnpikes, and to buy fire- 
engines. When the Territorial Legislature was in 
session, in 181 3, it passed a bill, much against the 
wishes of the old French town, removing the seat 
of Territorial government from Vincennes to the town 
of Corydon, in Harrison County, where the Assembly 
met the following December. One argument that 
was used for the necessity of this removal was the 
peril from hostile Indians on the border of the State, 
and the danger in which the archives might be found 
in case of an incursion! Madison, Salem, and other 
towns aspired to become the seat of government; 
the latter village threatened to take up the capital, 
and bear it off bodily! Madison offered one thousand 



The New State — 1816 149 

dollars bonus to secure it! In the year 1820, after 
much heated discussion, and many objections from 
the southern section of the State, the General Assembly 
of Indiana appointed ten commissioners, from as 
many different counties, to select a site for the per- 
manent seat of the State government. It was rec- 
ognized that in time the capital must occupy a central 
location. This would make the proposed site come 
within what was then the wilderness, called the 
"New Purchase," a tract ceded by the Indians ten 
years before. It would also rule out any favoritism 
toward sections already occupied. The commission 
met at the house of William Conner, on the west 
fork of the White River, in May of the same year. 
That well-known citizen. General John Tipton, one 
of the commissioners, has left a journal, which is a 
circumstantial account, of great interest, describing 
the journey taken in the work of determining the 
exact location for the future permanent capital of 
Indiana. General Tipton had been a soldier in the 
battle' of Tippecanoe, nine years before, and knew the 
territory that was to be traversed. It was he who 
purchased the land on which that battle was fought, 
where the soldiers, who fell in that conflict, were 
buried, and presented the historic field to the State. 
He was afterwards United States Senator. A few 
extracts from General Tipton's diary will give an 
idea of the frontier conditions which prevailed at 
that time where the new capital was to be founded. 
We reproduce it without corrections. He says : 

"On Wednesday the 17 of May 1820 I set out from Cory- 
don in Company with Gov'r Jennings. I had been ap- 
pointed by the last legislature one of the commissioners 
to select & locate a site for the permanent seat of govern- 



150 Historic Indiana 

ment of the state of Ind'a (we took with us Bill a Black 
Bouy) Haveing laid in plenty of Baker [bacon?] coffy &c 
and provided a tent we stopt at B. Bells two hours then 
set out and at 7 came to Mr. Winemans [?] on Blue River, 
stopt for the K't [night] "thursday the i8th. "some 
frost; set out early Stopt at Salem had breckfast paid 
$1.00 B &c and Bo't some powder paper &c paid 2.12 J 
Set out at II crost Muscakituck paid 25 cts and stopt at 
Col Durhams in Vallonia who was also a Commissioner 
here we found Gen'l Bartholomew one of the commissioners 
I cleaned out my gun after dinner we went to shooting" 

"Sunday 21 set out at ^ P 4! at 5 passed a corner of 
S36TiiNofR4E passed a plaice where Bartholomew 
and my self had encamped in June 18 13 missed our way 
traveled east then turned Back; at 8 stopt on a mudy 
Branch Boiled our coffy set out at 9 or J p 9. I killed 
a deer the first I have killed since 18 14 at 10 came on the 
traice at creek, found tree where I had wrote my name 
and dated the 19th June 18 13 we traveled fast and at 7 
encamped on a small creek having traveled about 45 
miles (horseback of course) 

Monday, 2 2d 

"a fine clier morning we set out at sunrise at J p 6 crost 
fall creek at a ripple stopt to B [bathe?] shave put on 
clean clothes &c this creek runs between 30 & forty miles 
perrelled with White river and about 6 or 8 miles from 
it in this creek we saw plenty of fine fish; set out at 9 
and passed a corner ofS32&33inTi7NofR4Eat 15 
p II came to the lower Delaware Town crost the river 
went up to the n w side and at once came to the house 
of William Conner the place appointed for the meeting of 
the commissioners he lives on a Prairie of about 250 
acres of the White R bottom a number of Indian Huts 
near his house : on our arrival we found G Hunt of Wayne 
County John Conner of Fayette Stephen Ludlow of Dear- 
born John Gilliland of Switzerland & Thos Emmison 
(Emerson) of Knox waiting us Wm Prince and F Rapp 



The New State — 1816 151 

not being up, we waited until late in the evening We 
then met and were sworn according to law and adjourned 
until tomorrow evening" 

"Wednesday the 24th a dark morning, at 9 Gov'r 
Jennings with the other comr. came on us set out for the 
mouth of fall creek Last Kt I staid in an Indian town 
saw some drunk Indians this morning sat at the Table 
of a Frenchman who has long lived with the Indians and 
lives with them he furnished his table for us with eggs: 
altered times since 1813 when I was last there hunting 
the Indians with whom we now eat drink and sleep they 
have now sold their land for a trifle and prepareing to 
leave the country, where they have laid their fathers and 
relatives, in which we are now hunting a site for the seat 
of Govrt of our State." 

After selecting a site near Fall Creek and having it 
surveyed, they started homeward, concluding the 
journal with this entry: 

"Sunday the 11. Stopt at Major Arganbrites [?], had 
dinner, etc. At dark got safe home, having been absent 
27 days, the compensation allowed us commisioners by 
the law being $2 for every 25 miles traveled to and from 
the place where we met, and $2 for each day's service 
while engaged in the discharge of our duty, my pay for 
the trip being $58 — not half what I could have made in 
my office, A very poor compensation." ^ 

The site selected was a heavily wooded miasmatic 
wilderness, sixty miles from nearest civilization, and 
at that time most inconveniently inland, so far as 
real navigation was to be had; and this remained 
the handicap of Indianapolis for a decade. Indian 
trails were the only paths to the place, and there 

' Tipton, John, "Journal," published in vol. i., No. 2, p. 74, hid. 
Mag. of Hist., 1905. 



152 Historic Indiana 

were no accommodations upon arrival. There were 
few people in the village, and settlers were so slow 
to choose it as a place to live, that at the end of the 
time named, when the Legislature should actually sit 
in the new capital, it had only one thousand popu- 
lation. The jealousy felt by the other sections against 
the new seat of government was shown in many 
ways. In 1820, Brookville had been made head- 
quarters for the entries of lands, for all the State 
northward of the Wabash. All purchasers must visit 
that village. For five years, the little town had en- 
joyed the prosperity and distinction of being the 
political and social centre of that part of the State. 
When the land office was moved to the new capital, the 
change was most bitterly opposed. In a pompous 
speech by one of the local celebrities, he referred to the 
little insignificant capital in the woods, as a place buried 
in miasmatic solitude and surrounded by a bound- 
less contiguity of shade. There was much discussion 
about what the embryo capital should be called. 
Indian names seemed to be in the minds of all. "Te- 
cumseh " was rejected, as too closely connected with 
past horrors, and "Suwarrow" was also dropped. 
Finally Indiana-polis was agreed upon, as combining 
a notion of the aborigines and a future metropolis. 

The county was organized, and in 1821 Alexander 
Ralston and his assistants laid out the capital on the 
present beautiful lines. Ralston was a Scotchman of 
ability, and fortunately had seen Old World cities and 
had assisted in the work of surveying the city of 
Washington, which gave him the advantage of a 
broader view of the future requirements of a capital 
city than would have been supplied by a frontiersman. 
To this training, and the sense of space which the 



The New State — 1816 153 

wilderness must have impressed on one, the city is 
indebted for its broad streets and Uberal plan. 

The lots were offered for sale to secure funds to build 
the State buildings, but few buyers came forward. 
The important business lots of the present day, on the 
corner of Washington and Delaware Streets, sold for 
$560.00, and others likewise. After ten years the author- 
ities put the price at $10.00 for the lowest lot, and in 
1842, they had closed thecity out for $125,000.00! With 
this fund they built the State-house, Court-house, Gov- 
ernor's residence. Clerks' Office, and Treasurer's Office, 
which would not allow much margin for ' 'graft," even in 
the crude architecture adopted for these State buildings. 
In November, 1824, Mr. Samuel Merrill, the Treasurer, 
brought the State papers and books from Corydon to 
the new capital in one wagon, with his family in another. 
The roads were so execrable at that season of the year 
that twelve miles and a half a day was all the distance 
they could cover. In January, 1825, the first Legisla- 
ture met in Indianapolis, and the permanent capital 
was established. For several decades many other 
towns in the State, especially those on the rivers, were 
of more commercial importance, and more attractive 
socially, than Indianapolis. The meeting of the Legis- 
lature was the only event of interest; and it was 
twenty-two years before the first railroad made the 
town accessible. 

In 1825, when General de La Fayette made a tour of 
America, he could not journey to the capital of the new 
State and Indiana's Governor went to Jeffersonville, 
on the Ohio River, to welcome the hero to Indiana soil. 
In the forest adjoining that village a feast was spread, 
to which the General was conducted by the State 
militia and children strewed flowers in his path. At 



154 Historic Indiana 

the head of the long two-hundred-and-fifty-foot table, 
was an arch with the inscription, "Indiana welcomes 
La Fayette, the champion of liberty in both hemi- 
spheres." 

After Indianapolis actually became the seat of govern- 
ment, the authorities being anxious to have the streets 
opened up, gave the magnificent timber, in what is now 
Washington Street, to the contractor for removing it. 
After the trees were felled, there were no mills to cut them 
up, and no demand for lumber, so the logs were rolled 
up in piles and burned, to the loss of the contractor 
and the regret of later generations. Great sugar groves 
occupied the ground where the Soldiers' Monument now 
stands, and where the State-house is situated. The 
first mail route was established in 1822 by popular 
subscription, and in the same year a newspaper ap- 
peared, as the forerunner of that brilliant series of 
journals which have since characterized the city. In 
the following year, a Union Sunday-School was started 
and the first of several Presbyterian Churches was 
organized a few months later. Said Henry Ward 
Beecher when pastor of one of them: "We have given 
Indianapolis a deep-blue Presbyterian tinge, which 
should last for several generations to keep her straight." 

The first violators of the law in the village had to be 
sent sixty miles overland to Fayette County, to the 
nearest jail; and the earliest couples that were married 
went to the same county-seat to get a license. As 
there was no outlet to markets, corn sold for ten cents 
a bushel, butter from three to eight cents a pound, 
eggs for five cents a dozen, and chickens for sixty cents 
a dozen. Dr. W. H. Wishard said in an address on 
the medical men and the practice in the early day in 
that city: 



The New State — 1816 155 

" Indianapolis was laid out in a dense forest with a heavy 
undergrowth of spice wood, prickly ash, weeds, and grape- 
vines, that made it impossible, in many places, for a man 
to go through the forest on horseback. There was but 
one road open that might be called a highway. That was 
from Brookville. There was an Indian trail from Straw- 
town and Conner's Prairie to Vincennes. In 1821, there 
was not one well person in ten. Dr. Coe was the only 
physician able for duty. He could be seen at all hours 
of the day and night wending his way from cabin to cabin, 
through the most impenetrable forest; the owls hooting 
and the wolves serenading him in his lonely walk, and the 
rattlesnakes shaking their tails every few rods to notify 
him that they were on the warpath. This picture is not 
overdrawn. The sickness and fatality of that year brought 
Indianapolis into such disrepute that it discouraged 
emigration. As the doctors had to ride into the country 
ten or fifteen miles, it was no unusual thing for a doctor 
to get lost and have to spend the night in the saddle or 
up a sapling. Such nights were not the most pleasant. 
The music was varied between the panthers, wolves, owls, 
and raccoon fights."^ 

In this fashion the practice of medicine was followed 
in Indianapolis when the capital was moved to the 
town in 1824. In those times, the regular practition- 
ers had the competition of certain old crones, who 
gathered herbs and simples in the right time of the 
moon, and administered this tea with weird and 
mysterious incantations, which the ignorant believed 
was working wonderful cures. There were no grist 
mills, and all the flour and meal must be carted a 
distance of sixty miles. The "cassimeres, bombazettes, 
dress shawls, cap-stuff, nankeen, and cambrick," that 

» Wishard, Dr. W. H., Address, printed by State Medical Society 
of Indiana. 



156 Historic Indiana 

were advertised for my lady's Sunday apparel, were 
brought from Cincinnati in pack-saddles, when the 
roads were too bad for the professional teamsters to 
pass over the trail. Teaming was a calling in those 
days for the stout-hearted. They decorated their 
horses with bows over the hames, which were hung 
with bells to make music wherever they floundered. 
Twelve days from Cincinnati, and ten from Lawrence- 
burg, was the length of time required when the roads 
were at their best. Two dollars a hundredweight w^as 
the minimum charge, and it took four horses to pull 
the load even when the weather was fine. 

But in time, fertile lands and official importance off- 
set the lack of river transportation, and gradually an 
excellent class of settlers w^as attracted to central 
Indiana. Mr. Fletcher wrote back to a Virginia friend : 

" I am much pleased with the inhabitants of this new- 
purchase. We have none here but independent free- 
holders, and a much more enlightened set of people than 
any others I have seen in a western country. We have 
emancipators from Kentucky, who are a sober class, and 
we have the thrift of Ohio. Our laws and constitution 
are truly republican. All fines on military delinquents 
and for misdemeanors are appropriated to the use of the 
county seminaries in the State. "^ 

Judge Banta told of one bully, who used to boast that 
he maintained one corner of Johnson Coimty Seminary, 
by his fines for disturbing the peace. Through two 
decades, Indianapolis sought by the construction of 
turnpikes, the National road, and canals, to overcome 
the disadvantages of its inland location until railroads 
were introduced. After the Civil War, Indianapolis 

» Indiana Magazine of History, vol. ii., 1906. 



The New State — i8x6 157 

became the metropolis as well as the beautiful capital. 
In the last quarter of a century, she attained her 
present reputation for commercial, intellectual, and 
social leadership, as well as being the official centre of 
the State. 

The new State was now steadily growing in population 
and wealth, in fact the population doubled between 
1830 and 1841, but in 1832 there was a border war that 
startled the settlers and brought out the State militia 
and a large number of volunteers from Indiana. Black 
Hawk, the chief of the Sac Indians, with headquarters 
on Rock River in Illinois, had refused to submit peace- 
fully to the banishment of the tribes west of the Mis- 
sissippi. He was a cunning and skilful leader and 
rallied the Fox and Sac tribes into armed resistance. 
The northwestern part of Indiana was but sparsely 
settled at that time. The lonely homes that dotted the 
prairies, w^est and north of the Wabash River, were still 
exposed to attack from any band of Indians that 
might steal upon them from northern Illinois, The 
Pottawatomie and Miami tribes were still on their 
reservations, on the Mississinewa River, In May, 
1832, the Governor of Illinois had called his troops 
to arms; and the news came that several persons had 
been murdered on Hickory Creek, and that the hostile 
Indians were infesting the country around Chicago. 
The counties along the Wabash hastily assembled 
bands of volunteers, and rode forth to defend the out- 
lying borders. Scouts ranged over the country in 
every direction, hunting for detached bands of savages. 
The settlers on the border, from Vincennes to La 
Porte, flocked into the villages and camped around 
the towns for protection. The scattered people in the 
outlying counties gathered into the fort and block- 



158 Historic Indiana 

houses, in terror of the scalping invaders. Many 
false reports further terrified the poor squatters: at 
one time it would be that the Miamis were rising; at 
another that the Indians, a thousand strong, were 
crossing Nine-Mile Prairie killing as they went; again 
word would come in from Sugar River that the whoop 
of the invaders was ringing through the forest there. 
Meanwhile the Illinois troops fought several fierce en- 
gagements and were driving the savages from their 
State towards Wisconsin. On the second of August 
Black Hawk was overtaken, his troops defeated, and 
he foiled in his desperate plans. The chief was made 
a prisoner; which terminated the horrors of that short 
but savage war. Indiana was not invaded; the troops 
she raised were not needed, but there was every reason 
for the terrors of the settlers and the prompt response 
of the volunteers. The people throughout that region 
were familiar with danger from experience not long 
past. The bloody tragedies enacted in the earlier 
settlements were fresh in their memories. There were 
but few families then residing in the State who had 
not lost some of their number by the hostile Indians. 
Col. Cockrum tells a droll story of this war, illustra- 
tive of the courage of pioneer women. The head of a 
family, living west of Lafayette, in great affright, 
gathered up his children in a cart, and, driving up to 
the door, was amazed to find that his wife had no in- 
tention of running from the savages on hearsay of 
danger. She told him that if he wished to go he might, 
but that when he recovered from his scare he would 
find her and the baby at the same old cabin. Bidding 
her a final, affectionate farewell, he still insisted on her 
going with him. "No," she said; "take the children 
and go. If I never see you again, I shall die with the 



The New State — 1816 159 

satisfaction of knowing that I had a husband who 
thought too much of his scalp to permit any Indian 
to have his black glossy locks as an ornament to his 
helmet." The husband and children remained away a 
few days, and no Indians materializing, he returned and 
found Bowser and Tige barking a welcome. Upon 
going into the cabin, they were welcomed by the 
courageous wife, who had one foot on the rocker and 
the other on the treadle of the spinning-wheel, while 
both hands were busy with the distaff. Looking 
around the house, the brave man espied a fine wild 
gobbler ready for dinner and a fresh coon-skin hanging 
on the wall. With beautiful consistency he exclaimed : 
"Mandy, why in thunderation have you been so free 
in using my powder?" She composedly replied: 
"Never mind, Ebenezer, there is plenty left. If you 
hear of an Indian crossing the Mississippi River, you 
wont need it, for you '11 be on the go to Lafayette 
again." 

In the beginning of Indiana's history as a separate 
commonwealth there was no State currency in cir- 
culation. Barter was universal. The only specie ever 
seen was the British and Spanish silver coinage. 
There were no gold coins in circulation in this section 
of the country until after the discovery of gold mines 
in California. For small change, Spanish dollars were 
cut into quarters, eighths, and sixteenths. These were 
called "bits," "two-bits," and "fo-pence" pieces. A 
fip was equal to five cents, you often heard an article 
priced at a "fip-and-a-bit. ' The government de- 
manded cash payments for lands, but aside from this 
purchase only salt, hardware, and a few such imported 
commodities brought actual money; all else was trade 
in the West. 



i6o Historic Indiana 

The first constitution of Indiana had. tried to safe- 
guard the currency of the future ; but financial troubles 
began before the organization of the State, with the 
volume of Ohio bank-notes, which were disbursed by 
the General Government during the War of 1 812-14. 
The Territorial bank which had been chartered at 
Vincennes was made a State institution in 181 7, with 
branches at Corydon, Brookfield, Vevay, and Madison. 
This little chain of banks began well, and would have 
been a great financial blessing to the new country had 
they not drifted into reckless ways. Soon they con- 
tracted debts to an amount double that of their de- 
posits, embezzled large sums from those deposits, and, 
issuing currency beyond all possible means in their 
power of redemption, brought ruin upon themselves and 
thousands of people. This heedless pace caused them 
to forfeit their charter in 182 1. The one at Madison 
was more honestly managed, and eventually redeemed 
its notes. So serious was the condition of affairs that 
it became necessary for the Federal Government to 
reduce the price of entry lands from two dollars to a 
dollar and a quarter per acre, to cancel its claims to 
interest, and permit a re-arrangement of smaller hold- 
ings, clear of debt, for the larger tracts then in the 
possession of settlers. At this time the demand for 
the produce of the West had fallen off, three years of 
devastating sickness prevailed in the section, and the 
new State passed through a period of the deepest gloom, 
followed by fairer sailing and better times. A deter- 
mination to overcome the lack of transportation facili- 
ties originated the system of internal improvements, 
which was inaugurated in 1832, and prosecuted during 
the years immediately following. Again there was a 
season of prosperity. As the public works progressed, 



The New State— 1816 161 

and the amount of money in circulation increased 
from the dispersion of United States Bank funds, the 
population of the State and nation plunged into an 
orgy of land speculation on credit. They based the 
prospect of immediate increase of values on the use- 
fulness of the coming canals and roads. The con- 
tractors brought disaster by paying the laborers, very 
largely, in the fiat money just then being issued by 
Michigan, which would not pass current in the sea- 
board centres of trade, where the merchant must meet 
his obligations. In 1832, President Jackson had 
abolished the United States Bank and the people of 
Indiana had begun to agitate the pressing need of some 
provision by the State for a safe currency. After 
conservatively adjusting their differences of opinion, 
the charter of 1834 was granted for the State Bank 
of Indiana. This bank with its centre at the capital 
and thirteen branches in the larger towns, was 
established on sound principles, and throughout its 
history was so well conducted on conservative lines, 
that -it remained a model for other States, and was a 
safe institution during the life of its charter, which ex- 
pired in 1857. It was this institution that was required 
to hold every branch thereof mutually responsible for 
all of the debts and engagements of each other. In 
case of failure the debts of an insolvent branch must 
be paid by the others, in proportion. As each branch 
was represented on the general board it insured un- 
remitting vigilance, and a close watch being kept on 
the departments by all of the others. The board of 
control had unlimited authority over all of the branches. 
It was devised by the founders that the accumulated 
profits were to be turned over to the school fund, at the 
termination of the charter, which resulted in netting 



1 62 Historic Indiana 

three million dollars to the permanent endowment 
of the public school system. There were many far- 
sighted provisions in the law founding this bank, which 
insured to the people a safe place of deposit and the 
advantage of a sound currency for twenty years. The 
conservative management and high moral standard 
of the men in control of the institution assured the 
great success which it enjoyed, and distinguished it 
from other State banks of that time. It outrode the 
panic of 1837, and the financial difftculties which 
stranded the treasury of the State on the shoals of no 
more credit for public improvements. 

National and foreign credit was at this time ex- 
hausted, as well as that of the Western States. To 
assist the treasury of Indiana, the Legislature of 1839 
authorized the issue of State scrip to the amount of a 
million and a half dollars ; and private individuals, also 
disdaining the lessons of history, proceeded to try for 
themselves the experiment of manufacturing money by 
the printing-press, regardless of any specie basis. Not 
only were the State treasury notes floated as currency, 
but shop-keepers, packers, and traders issued bills in 
payment for debts. When all of their fictitious values 
were depreciated, the State money came to be known as 
"Red Dog," from the paper on which it was printed; 
and the plank-road scrip was called in derision "Blue 
Pup." It seems strange that so few saw that ruin 
was inevitable. This currency was soon worthless, 
business was prostrated, and values destroyed. 

The successful State Bank was a monopoly. As the 
years passed, others grew envious of its prosperity and 
wanted like opportunities. The discontented element 
secured a clause m the new constitution of 1851 em- 
powering the Legislature to grant new charters. A 



The New State — 1816 163 

free banking law was the result. This statute opened 
the door for another season of disaster. Banks of 
issue sprang up everywhere on hilltops, on a stump, 
anywhere that a man chose to issue currency. These 
firms made no pretension to be banks of deposit, their 
only business being to issue and float notes. "A few 
men would get together, purchase a few thousand dol- 
lars worth of the depreciated bonds of some far-away 
municipality, deposit them with the auditor of State, 
and receive authority to enter upon the manufacture 
of paper money." They would issue bills, to an 
amount two or three times greater than the value 
of the securities deposited, put them in circulation, and 
then the bank, the officers, and the directors would 
disappear and the notes be worthless. Forty-eight 
hours was too long a time to pass, without a decision 
whether the money you had received was worth fifty 
cents or a dollar. Many of these free banks started 
on their career with no more actual capital than was 
expended on the engraving of their currency notes, 
and" desk room in an office. Mr. McCulloch says, 
"Their life was pleasant and short; their demise 
ruinous and shameful. As soon as their notes began 
to be presented for payment they died without a 
struggle."^ The panic of 1857 put an end to the 
inglorious existence of the fraudulent concerns. The 
exploit of basing a currency on nothing and floating it 
in the air was never more wildly attempted than at this 
time in Indiana. No doubt it was the experience of this 
debased money that made the State spurn the free silver 
doctrine a half century later. 

As the time approached for the expiration of the 

1 McCulloch, Hugh, Men and Measures of Half a Century, page 
126. New York, 1888. 



164 Historic Indiana 

charter of the reliable State Bank, and the citizens 
realized the necessity of a safe currency, a group of 
influential men united in a quiet movement to secure a 
charter from the Legislature of 1855 for the Bank of 
Indiana. After obtaining this valuable franchise they 
sold to the old organizations the permit for the dis- 
tricts where they were so honorably established and 
new ones were organized for other sections. This 
institution was guided into a safe and honorable career 
by its first president, the Hon. Hugh McCulloch. It 
weathered the financial storm of '59 in great credit. 
At a time when old established banks in New York 
and everywhere were obliged to suspend, and private 
institutions went to the wall by the score, the Bank of 
Indiana redeemed its obligations in specie without 
interruption. This institution went into liquidation 
when the tax was increased on other notes than those of 
national banks, and most of the branches reorganized 
under the Federal statute. No safer banking laws 
could be found anywhere than the statutes of this 
State thereafter, the savings banks being modelled 
for the benefit of depositors, and to induce frugality. 
The securities allowed are based on real estate, the 
improvements are not included in the valuations. 

The new constitution was adopted by Indiana in the 
fifties to replace the one formulated for primitive 
times, when it was not so queer to have the Legislature 
regulate local and even personal affairs. Under the 
old law, the granting of divorces, electing part of the 
State officers, abolishing county offices, and creating 
new ones, and the granting of charters for the incor- 
porating of railroads and business concerns, whereby 
abuses crept in and legislators were corrupted, were all 
in the hands of the legislative body! In the new con- 



The New State — 1816 165 

stitution this was corrected. A reminder of the old 
contention in Indiana, regarding negroes, was incor- 
porated in the later organic law, when it was provided 
that no negro or mulatto should have the right of 
suffrage, and furthermore that they should not come 
into, or settle in the State. Even after the Civil War 
was over, when the fifteenth amendment to the Federal 
Constitution was submitted to the Legislature, the 
Democratic members all resigned, rather than ratify 
it ; and upon the newly elected ones also tendering their 
resignations, the amendment was declared passed by a 
Republican speaker ruling that a quorum was present, 
by counting the Democrats as present and not voting. 
In the next session, when the Democrats attempted to 
rescind the action of the preceding assembly, the Re- 
publican members prevented its repeal by resigning. 

After the adoption of the new constitution, Indiana 
may be said to have passed from the pioneer period of 
her history. By the progressive measures adopted 
then and by the school legislation which followed, by 
the -improved means of transportation, which gradually 
ensued upon the introduction of railroads, her future 
was assured. The increase of population has been un- 
interrupted, and the accessions have been a desirable 
class. Fifteen counties have had no emigrants from 
foreign countries in late years. The manufacturing 
centres and the mining regions have had many, but 
they are industrious. The foreigners, who came into 
the State two or three decades ago, have become as- 
similated with the general population, and have con- 
tributed to the sum of good citizenship within the 
State, The future status of Indiana must depend 
upon the quality of the representatives that she sends 
to the State Legislature. 



CHAPTER IX 

EARLY CHURCHES IN INDIANA 

IN fancy we may picture the long procession of 
churchgoers, during the different decades of 
history in Indiana, as they are reflected in the 
mirror of the past. 

In the very beginning, we see the zealous French 
priest, arrayed in his long black robes, holding a 
crucifix aloft, as he stands in the little log chapel, at- 
tached to the military post, and blesses his wildwoods 
parishioners. It is a saint's day. The Jesuit father 
has come hundreds of miles in his canoe to instruct 
and absolve the sins of the little isolated flock. Filing 
into his presence, we see the motley throng that lives 
within the stockade. First comes the haughty com- 
mandant in the full uniform of Louis of France, at- 
tended by a detachment of soldiers in their blue coats 
with white facings, and short clothes. Following 
them come the peasants wearing the long, coarse blue 
surtout, red sash, and cap, of their native land, and the 
deerskin moccasins which they have adopted from the 
Indian. With them come the women in short skirts 
and bodice, wearing the peasant's cap, and the rib- 
bons, ornaments, and beads, brought by some admiring 
boatman, upon his return from far-off Canada. The 
reckless coureurs de hois, dressed in fringed buck- 

i66 



Early Churches in Indiana 167 

skin and embroideries, with a knife in the belt, lounge 
in with the half-breeds. Following these are the taci- 
turn savages, from the forests round about. With 
great satisfaction in the forgiveness of all their mis- 
deeds, the assembly kneels on the floor of the rude 
chapel, counts its beads, and gains absolution. After 
the benediction, and making the sign of the cross from 
the font, they pass out into the sunshine; and the hap- 
piness of a volatile pleasure-loving people is theirs, as 
they spend the rest of the day, gaily dancing upon the 
green. 

Before these scenes have passed away, the Anglo- 
Saxon race has straggled into the wilderness. In one 
of their own cabin homes, or in summer, in the groves, 
which were God's first temples on the frontier, the 
scattered settlers gather for worship. It might be said 
to hear preaching, for the service is wholly unlike the 
Canadian Frenchman's at the post. In buckskin and 
homespun these settlers came together during two 
whole generations. The backwoods preacher who 
travelled far and wide on horseback, and ministered 
unto the scattered settlements, was as the faithful 
"voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the 
way of the Lord." During long weeks between their 
visitations, there was no observance of the Sabbath, 
except where a godly father or mother took down 
the old Bible, and read aloud to the family. In a 
wide country, with large districts, sparsely populated, 
there were comparatively few stationary ministers; 
but there were many, embracing all denominations, 
who traversed the whole country. They formed an 
itinerant corps, who visited in rotation, within their 
respective bounds every settlement, town, and village. 
Living remote from each other as the people then 



i68 Historic Indiana 

did, and spending much of their time, in domestic soH- 
tude in vast forests, or widespreading prairies, the 
"Appointment" for preaching was often looked upon 
as a gala day. 

In organization, Charleston, on Silver Creek, claims 
that the first Protestant Church was organized there, 
in November, 1798. It was a Baptist Church, and 
had a struggle for existence. The first Methodist 
Church organized, is dated in 1803, and the Presbyterian 
in 1806. Whether Methodists or Baptists were the 
first to enter on evangelistic work in Indiana, matters 
not. People belonging to both denominations came 
early, and their travelling preachers came with them. 
These hardy, zealous, earnest men built their own 
cabins and then began their spiritual ministrations 
throughout the thinly scattered population. 

The Baptists were much hampered in their progress, 
at first, because of the large number, of what was then 
known, as "Hard-shell Baptists." This sect was a non- 
progressive people who were against all missionary 
efforts, because of their belief that all who were pre- 
destined to be saved, would be saved, without any 
missionaries. The Missionary Baptists were a live 
progressive body, and were independents in organiza- 
tion. They were a revolt from tradition and church 
authority back to the Bible — the Bible only. Their 
pioneer preachers were noted for their simple eloquence 
and the democratic methods of their teaching. The 
Methodist preachers of that early time were uncon- 
ventional, candid, brusque, emotional speakers, and 
were picturesque and rugged characters. It is said 
that Rev. Asbury, during a long ministry, rode a dis- 
tance that would have taken him twelve times around 
the world. No doubt Peter Cartwright and several 



Early Churches in Indiana 169 

other faithful exhorters on the Wabash could score as 
many leagues in their ministrations. 

Alexander Campbell made a great impression on the 
people of many sections of Indiana. The sect he 
founded, especially at the capital, is still large and has 
an educational institution of prominence, originated 
by its membership. 

Owing to their disapproval of slavery, many of the 
early settlers from the Carolinas, who came into the 
free State of Indiana, were Quakers. Wherever this 
peace-loving people formed a settlement, they imme- 
diately established a " meeting ", and at the same time, 
a school for the instruction of their youth. The south- 
eastern part of the State, particularly, felt the high 
moral influence of the Society of Friends, in the develop- 
ment of social conditions. Their churches and schools 
were a controlling, repressing, quieting, elevating in- 
fluence, over the boisterous element of the frontier. 
The numberless teachers supplied by this sect extended 
this influence, and made known the tenets of freedom, 
sobriety, education, and a simple living, held with 
such tenacity by that congregation. The Presby- 
terians instituted, from the first, a centralized system 
of organization, and held to a rigorous theology. They 
maintained an educated ministry, and located their 
little churches in the towns, instead of in the country. 
This gave them a prestige, from the very first. There 
were many educated persons in their membership 
and little sensationalism in their service, or preaching, 
to attract the multitude. The schools this denomina- 
tion established were among the most enduring in- 
fluences of the new State. 

Of the faithful men who ministered unto the border 
people, too much cannot be said in praise. A writer of 



lyo Historic Indiana 

forty years ago quaintly said that a decidedly religious 
stamp was given to Indiana character by the preachers 
of an early day. They were often men of intellect, as 
well as of zeal. They found their way to the back- 
woods, and preached Christ from a cabin door, or 
from the shade of a spreading tree, to the sunburned 
men and women gathered from the region round about. 
It was thanks to these fervid laborers, that the little 
church was erected, as soon as the log cabin afforded the 
shelter of a home. The contemptuous application 
of "North C'lina church" was applied to men of 
notoriously worldly or otherwise wicked character. 

The trials and privations of the earlier preachers, 
if told to-day, would be beyond belief. Isaac McCoy 
and his wife, who spent their lives as missionaries to 
the Indians, labored the whole time in direst poverty, 
utter isolation, constant danger, failing health, and 
great privation, before rest came in death. He wrote 
that he did not know what to do about taking his 
fourteen-year-old daughter into the wilderness, away 
from all educational advantages; but that the Lord 
solved the problem by suddenly taking her to himself. 
The women in these families were left alone in their 
solitary cabins, when the minister went off on his long 
itinerary. Sickness, raids of savages, wild beasts were 
the dangers they had to face, while the minister trav- 
elled the circuit. Most of the ministers cleared, and 
cultivated their own homesteads and supported their 
families by other labor, at the same time ministering 
unto the people, on the Sabbath day. Indeed in the 
very earliest days, a man was held in scorn who did not 
labor with his hands. 

There have always been men, in every locality, who 
were independent in their thinking, and identified with 



Early Churches in Indiana 171 

no church. One of the earHest settlers of Indiana, 
bom in 1781, left the following record of his religious 
views, written in his seventy-third year, 

"As to religion: 'Happy is he, the only man, who, from 
choice, does all the good he can.' The world is my country, 
and my religion is to do right. I am a firm believer in the 
Christian religion, though not as lived up to by most of 
its professors of the present day. In the language of 
Jefferson, I look upon the 'Christian Philosophy, as the 
most sublime and benevolent, but most perverted system 
that ever shone on man.' I have no use for the priesthood, 
nor can I abide the shackles of sectarian dogmas. I see 
no necessity for confession of faith, creeds, forms, and 
ceremony. In the most comprehensive sense of the word, 
I am opposed to all wars, and to slavery; and trust the 
time is not far distant when they will be numbered among 
the things that were, and viewed as we now look back 
upon some of the doings of what we are pleased to style 
the dark ages." * 

To an Orthodox woman who thought a soul lost that 

did not belong to a church, an old pioneer — in fact 

the first Lieutenant-Governor of Indiana — answered, 

God is love. Love never lost anything. It is infinitely 

tender, and infinitely forgiving." 

In Indiana, as elsewhere in America, the freedom of 
thought and independence of character, fostered by 
frontier life and an absence of ecclesiastical control, 
occasioned the rise of many religious sects. Some 
of these have entirely disappeared from the theological 
horizon. Their very names would have no significance 
now. There was a great variety of opinions on minor 
subjects, even in the earliest times and this occasioned 

' Anonymous, Reminiscences. 



172 Historic Indiana 

the scores of denominations. In an address by a 
citizen of Indianapolis, delivered in the fifties, it was 
proudly claimed that there were twenty thousand 
inhabitants, and behold the spires of her twenty-seven 
churches, of the different denominations of Christians, 
shooting upward toward the clouds! Rev. Nathaniel 
Richmond wrote from a little hamlet in central In- 
diana in 1843: "There are two kinds of Methodists, 
two of Quakers, and two kinds of Presbyterian Churches 
here. And all of the talk is of ' means and anti-means.' 
The Baptists are mostly anti-mission. Dr. Dollinger 
exclaimed, 'How can I live in a country where they 
found a new church every day ! ' " 

The sermons in those days were one, two, or three 
hours long. Reading sermons was not tolerated on 
the frontier. The minister must speak extempora- 
neously, and with fire and zeal. The preaching, as 
well as the discussions of laymen, was largely doctrinal 
and controversial as was the custom of the times, 
elsewhere. 

Series of debates between noted preachers were 
held, and people went miles to the "meeting" — doubt- 
less as much to hear the discussion as for worship. 
They debated on such points as free-will versus predes- 
tination, falling from grace versus the final persever- 
ance of the saints, good works versus justification by 
faith, immersion versus sprinkling, and election versus 
free grace. Good men believed these subjects vital, 
and the certain terrors of hell were imminent, for 
those who did not settle the question. It was the 
vividness of this impending danger, which wrought up 
the otherwise grave and unexcitable people, to such 
strong, emotional excitement. The differences of opin- 
ion were dwelt upon and this held the people apart. 



Early Churches in Indiana 173 

It was said in jest, that the only difference between 
the new school and old school of one denomination 
was that one stood up, and the other sat down when 
they prayed in church. Sects sprang up, named for 
their founders who started the agitation. Alexander 
Campbell won thousands of followers, and then an- 
other branch had New Light. An estimate given by 
an old timer, of the preachers to whom he listened, in his 
youth, gives an excellent idea of the type of men who 
were then acceptable to the ministry. Of one he says : 

" He was the Napoleon of the Methodist preachers of 
eastern Indiana, I knew him well. He seemed to be made 
for the very work in which he was engaged. He had a 
good person, a strong physical formation, expanded lungs, 
a clear and powerful voice, reaching to the verge of the 
camp-ground, the eye of the eagle; and his talents as a 
preacher were of a very high order. I never heard but 
one man that was like him in his meridian days. He 
could feed his babes with the 'milk of the Word' and 
hurl the terrors of the law at old sinners." ^ 

The itinerant preacher riding up to the cabin, and 
"hallooing the house" to see if any one was at home 
and unloading his saddle-bags to stop for the night, 
was a welcome occurrence on the frontier. In the 
isolation of the wilderness the settlers longed for 
companionship, and as the minister was the most 
considerable personage of the community, he was 
always sure of a warm welcome and a good chicken- 
dinner. These men were representative of the muscular 
Christianity required on the frontier and were a part 
of what Mr. Nicholson has termed, that vigorous 
Protestant evangelization of Indiana, which triumphed 

J Smith, Oliver H. Early Trials, page 264. Cin., 1858. 



174 Historic Indiana 

over mud and malaria, and carried the gospel far 
beyond the sound of church bells. There were many 
union churches formed on the frontier, when there 
were few of each denomination in a neighborhood. 
Differences of opinion were tenaciously held in those 
days, and the various sects in the congregation would 
soon arrange to hold services of their own on alternating 
Sundays. ' ' Once a month ' ' preaching, or four churches 
to each minister, was the rule, in all the struggling 
communities. Congregational singing was universal in 
the early churches. Often there was a choir to lead, 
but there were no organs. Indeed, the innovation of 
an organ or fiddle being introduced has repeatedly 
been the occasion of churches dividing. There were 
few hymn-books; the minister "lined off" the hymns, 
the leader gave the pitch from his tuning fork, and 
all joined in with enthusiasm and fervor, seldom 
heard in these days of paid choirs. Hearts were up- 
lifted in singing the old hymns, and their spiritual 
effect was as great as that of the sermon. In those 
days, there was a holy awe of the terrors and punish- 
ments awaiting the unconverted. The consequent 
spiritual exaltation, and fervor of those who hoped 
they had escaped these terrors by the grace of God, 
was as extremely emotional. From the scarcity of 
buildings, there grew up the custom of holding camp- 
meetings in the beautiful forests. An old annalist 
gave the following quaint account of the first of these 
meetings held during the years 1799 and 1801. A 
vast concourse of people assembled under the foliage 
of the trees, and continued their religious exercise 
day and night. This novel way of worship excited 
great attention. In the night, the grove was illum- 
inated with lighted candles, lamps, or torches. This, 



Early Churches in Indiana 175 

together with the stillness of the night, the solemnity 
which rested on every countenance, the pointed and 
earnest manner with which the preachers exhorted 
the people to repentance, prayer, and faith, produced 
the most awful sensations in the minds of all present. 
At these gatherings, the people fell under the power 
of the Word " like com before a storm of wind" ; many 
thus affected arising from the dust with divine glory 
beaming upon their countenances gave utterance to 
strains of ecstatic gratitude. 

Few escaped without being affected. Such as tried 
to ran away from it were frequently struck on the 
way, or impelled by some alarming signal to return. 
Great numbers fell unconscious, and remained so for 
hours. To prevent their being trodden under foot by 
the multitude, they were collected together and laid 
out in order, where they remained in charge of friends, 
until they should pass through the strange phenomena 
of their conversion. In consequence of such vast 
assemblages of people, it was impossible for one person 
to address them, hence they w^ere divided into groups. 
At times the whole grove resounded with the praise 
of God, and at other times was pierced with the cries 
of distressed penitents. The number that "fell" at 
some of these meetings in trance or ecstasy of excite- 
ment reached the number of three thousand! This 
form of religious meeting was found in every Western 
State. 

About 1843 there arose a religious frenzy over the 
immediate second advent of Christ, which swept over 
the country, and made a distinct impression on certain 
temperaments in Indiana. The belief in the speedy 
return of Christ for a glorious reign on earth has 
always elicited enthusiasm, and in the early part of 



176 Historic Indiana 

the nineteenth century, in New England, William 
Miller became the founder of a sect holding peculiar 
views on the subject of the millennium. His followers 
increased until there were over 50,000 people in America 
and England who had embraced his hopes. The 
Millerites believed that their leader had found out 
the meaning of Daniel's incomprehensible prophecies; 
that he had worked out like a sum in arithmetic, the 
exact day when the end of the world was to come, 
and that was in August, 1 843 . They became fanatically 
responsive to the exhortation to be ready for the 
immediate Judgment Day, and thought the clergy 
inconsistent, who professed to believe in prophecy 
and yet discarded this revelation. These teachings 
had spread over the East, and made their way as 
far as the Western frontier. 

The fierce polemical discussions and the conclusive 
sectarianism of that day had taught the people any- 
thing but the "modesty of true science," and we are 
told by the people who were living at that time, that 
the unsolvable problems of the centuries were taken 
out of the hands of puzzled scholars, and settled 
summarily and positively by the imaginative laymen. 

Many persons in various parts of the country had 
become such fanatics that they had sold or given 
away their lands and possessions, in awestruck an- 
ticipation of the immediate end of all things; also 
as a testimony to their belief. Shrewd sharpers played 
upon credulity and bought up for a small pittance 
the property of the deluded. This happened in various 
localities east and west. Later, when the catastrophe 
did not take place, there were many lawsuits and 
lifelong feuds over property so disposed of. We are 
told by old citizens who remember this wave of fanat- 



Early Churches in Indiana 177 

icism, that trade took up the craze. One enterprising 
manufacturer had table covers of oil-cloth, printed, 
on which was a design of a wheel displaying all these 
figures of Daniel's prophecies. They were eagerly 
bought by the deluded followers, and were used long 
after the failure of the millennium to appear; and the 
ascension robes did duty as frocks for festival oc- 
casions. After months of preaching and exhortation 
to be ready for the end, the religious excitement 
reached its culmination as the tenth and eleventh of 
August came on. Some made ascension robes. Work 
was suspended everywhere. The people who did not 
believe in the new cult, felt sorry for the frenzy of 
the deluded ones and wished the time were passed. 

A witness of the scene said that the sun on the 
eleventh of August rose gloriously. People pointed to 
it with trembling and said it would rise no more. 
Men said: "Behold the beginning of the fervent heat 
that shall melt the elements." Night grew on, and 
every " shooting star" was a new sign of the end. In 
their different neighborhoods the people assembled 
out of doors to await the coming. They sang hymns, 
exhorted each other, shouted with excitement, some 
fainted from sheer terror, and some nervous temper- 
aments lost their reason during the strain of the last 
hours. In many districts the torrid summer heat was 
broken by violent thunder-storms, which added to 
the agitation and terror of the excited multitudes. 
The lightning flashed, and the rain poured down in 
torrents on the kneeling congregations. 

When the tragical night had passed, without the 
day of judgment being ushered in, and the clear fresh 
morning dawned, cool and refreshed by the rains, it 
found the credulous people dazed and exhausted. 



178 Historic Indiana 

The reaction, was, in many ways, disastrous to belief 
and morals. 

Early settlers from the Atlantic States, had never 
known of Sunday-schools, and brought no plans with 
them for such services. Indeed many church members 
in Eastern cities at that time would not permit their 
children to attend the "new f angled" Sabbath-schools. 
The little children sat, or slept, through three-hour 
sermons, and that was the limit of their Sabbath-day 
diversions. In Indiana, as elsewhere, when Sunday- 
schools were inaugurated they were used to instruct 
children and adults, how to read; and many an 
ignorant pioneer youth has learned his letters from 
Watts's Hymns or the Bible. One of the verses com- 
mitted to memory by the children of those days will 
give an idea of the cheerful character of the theology 
taught : 

" Why should I love my sports so well, 
So constant at my play, 
And lose the thoughts of heaven and hell; 
And then forget to pray?" 

From Historical Sketches of Sunday-school Work by 
Wm. H. Levering, who spent his life in the work, and 
sixty years of that time laboring in the Indiana field, 
we learn the following facts regarding Sabbath-schools 
in Indiana: 

"While much has been done and written about the 
early churches yet almost no mention was made of Sunday- 
schools. This was owing to the fact that there were but 
a few or none; for be it known that prior to a half a cen- 
tury ago, Sunday-schools were in disfavor with a large 
number of the churches. The writer well remembers that 



Early Churches in Indiana 179 

in his earliest experiences the churches gave a cold shoulder 
to Sunday-Schools, faithful women persisted in maintaining 
them, and in time, when their great value as a 'nursery 
of the church' was forced upon the attention of the ruling 
members the church opened its heart and its doors. "^ 

In the year 1828, a young Christian missionary came 
from Connecticut to Washington in Daviess County, 
Indiana, the Reverend Ransom Hawley, and much 
of his earliest efforts and time were devoted to or- 
ganizing and building up Sunday-schools in Washing- 
ton, and its vicinity. The houses of worship were 
cold, and many of these country schools could not be 
kept open in the winter months. Mr. Hawley has 
recorded that 

"some who commenced with the alphabet can now read. 
Those who religiously instruct their offspring have found 
Sabbath-schools not interfering with their rights, but an 
auxiliary in bringing up their children in the nurture and 
admonition of the Lord." 

This old memorandum reminds us of two facts re- 
garding the changes since the Sabbath-school movement 
began. Now spelling lessons are no longer necessary, 
and to-day, perhaps, the Bible training is largely from 
the Sunday-school, instead of at the mother's knee. 
Committing verses of Scripture to memory was a 
marked feature of the teaching in those days. Whole 
books of the Bible were recited each Sabbath. Great 
familiarity with the text of Holy Writ was acquired 
and remained in the memory. 

1 Levering, Wm. H., Pamphlet, Historical Sketches.'.' La Fayette. 
1906. 



i8o Historic Indiana 

Reverend Hawley adds : 

" At first our books were the New Testament and Watts's 
Psalms and Hymns. On August 7, 1829, we sent $40.37! 
to New Albany for books. These were Hbrary books 
pubUshed by the American Sunday-school Union, and 
spelling books published by the same society. All of these 
schools were conducted on Union principles — that is all 
denominations participating. I do not know of any other 
kind of schools until after 1840. My journeying in preach- 
ing was done mostly on horseback, and I have ridden thus 
more than go, 000 miles. One, Reverend Isaac Reed, 
Presbyterian missionary, arrived in New Albany in 181 8 
and there organized the first Sunday-school in Indiana." 

After two previous short-lived attempts, a per- 
manent organization of the State Sabbath-school 
forces was accomplished in 1865 and is still flourishing 
under the name of the Indiana State Sunday-school 
Union. The last statistics that he records gives the 
number of Sabbath-schools in the State as 5617; 
officers and teachers, 45,600; scholars, 515,568. Mr. 
Levering was nine times elected president of this 
State union. As in other States the Sabbath-schools of 
Indiana now may truly be called the Church at work. 

In the temperance work, the early churches took little 
part; but their good membership formed various 
organizations for the control of the liquor traffic and 
the persuasion of the intemperate. The first tem- 
perance paper published in the West is credited to 
an Indiana man. John W. Osborne, a worthy citizen 
of Greencastle began issuing the Temperance Advo- 
cate, in 1834; and for m.any years he sent out this 
sheet at his own expense. There have been many 
temperance organizations of Christian people since 



Early Churches in Indiana i8i 

then and the sentiment against general drinking 
is very different from pioneer times. 

The student of the early history of the Western 
States will find in the reminiscences of old settlers 
no more interesting chapters than their recollections 
of the pioneer churches and their ministers. Into 
the fruits of their ardent labors, the present gener- 
ations have entered; their memories are a heritage. 
Here, the subject may only be brought in as one of 
the influences in the development of the State. In- 
diana's obligation to these influences cannot be cal- 
culated. The present and future generations can 
scarcely measure their indebtedness to those devoted 
Christian forefathers. A record of their labors in 
their various neighborhoods would be an invaluable 
addition to the archives of the Commonwealth. It 
is scarcely possible that an acquaintance with the 
greatly good, an intimate knowledge of their unpre- 
tending heroism, a sympathy with their unselfish 
sorrows and their lofty joys will not refine and elevate 
our lives. 



CHAPTER X 

CRIMES OF THE BORDER 

IN common with all other frontiers, Indiana had 
grave tales of outlawry and crime in the early 
days. The reprisals on the Spanish traders of 
the river towns and the confiscation of their goods 
were among the earliest depredations that occurred 
after the Americans were responsible for the Territory. 
In their anger over the closing of navigation on the 
Mississippi River, the settlers would become completely 
exasperated over the embargo and confiscation of 
their goods. In this temper, they would form bands 
of raiders and seize every boatload of commerce, on the 
sm.all rivers, belonging to Spanish boatmen. They 
would also appropriate every vestige of merchandise 
owned by Spanish merchants in the towns on the 
shore. These forays would be followed by appeals 
to the Spanish Governor at New Orleans, and the 
whole matter of reprisals and open navigation would 
be carried on up to Madrid. These international 
squabbles on the frontier made stirring times in 
Indiana Territory. The Indian warfare is recounted 
in the story of the Territorial period. We come now, 
upon the consequences of that warfare. The very 
license and necessity of carrying deadly weapons for 
defence against the savages made the people familiar 

182 



Crimes of the Border 183 

with arms and bloodshed. Every pioneer carried a 
rifle, a knife, and a tomahawk or axe, when he was 
laboring. The members of the organized militia were 
required by law to attend church in full fighting trim, 
to be ready for any surprise by the Indians. From 
these customs, it came about that, in any sudden heat 
of passion or enmity, assault was pretty sure to follow 
an encounter. It is also necessary to remember that 
some of the frontier people had come from the rougher 
border element of the Southern mountains. While 
having their own code of honor, which governed their 
fights, they were essentially a rude, boisterous, drink- 
ing, fighting class of people. They were always a 
source of displeasure and offence to the much larger 
class of law-abiding citizens. When they gathered, 
as was their custom, on Saturday afternoon or on 
muster day, and whiskey had circulated freely, the 
causes for which they might take umbrage increased 
hourly. During the homeward ride, on horseback, 
the road was one wild "halloo" of racing and banter, 
often ending in a free-for-all fight. They had an 
unwritten code which required that "all fights must 
be fit fairly"; and when the "under dog cried 'nufif" 
the striking, gouging, kicking, and hair-pulling con- 
test must be acknowledged settled, at least for that 
time. Much of this fighting was pure banter, without 
any quarrel to start the fray. Mr. Parker recalls the 
fact that difTerences of opinion were not even necessary. 
Neat clothing, correct speech, and gentlemanly bearing 
were often a sufficient provocation; or a bully might 
choose to "Renown it" by drawing a circle about 
himself, and defying any one to enter the space, 
claiming that he could "whup " the whole town. 
Political strife in hotly contested campaigns some- 



184 Historic Indiana 

times called into use the handy weapons that were 
worn for defence. And so through all the experiences 
of the border there crept in lawless deeds among the 
hardy frontiersmen. It is not only of these encounters, 
but of organized bands of freebooters, horse-thieves, 
counterfeiters, kidnappers, and the excesses of the 
bands of Regulators, that sensational stories were 
told by old settlers. 

Shortly after the War of 181 2, before steamboats 
were in use on the rivers of Indiana, there was a class 
of bargemen who used to loaf about the landings. 
They were a hardy, roistering, fearless set of fellows, 
and none of them more muscular or more daring than 
one Mike Fink. With his drinking, laborious, sturdy 
crew, he spent much of his time, when the river was 
low, in the towns along the Ohio. Mike and a friend 
named Carpenter used to practise rifle-shooting, by 
filling a tin-cup with whiskey, placing it, in turn, on 
each other's head, and shooting at it at the distance of 
seventy yards. It was always pierced, without injury 
to the one on whose head it was placed. After showing 
their confidence in each other in this way for a number 
of years, they quarrelled over an Indian squaw, and 
henceforth there was smothered hate. Later they 
pretended to "make up and call it off with a drink." 
To show that peace was declared they were to shoot 
for the cup, as of yore. Bequeathing his trusty rifle, 
shot-pouch, powder-horn, and wages to a friend. 
Carpenter took his position with the cup of whiskey 
on his head. Mike loaded, picked the flint, drew 
a bead, and called out: "Hold your noddle steady; 
don't spill the whiskey — I shall want some presently." 
Cocking his rifle again he took aim, and his foe fell, 
shot in the centre of the forehead. The law was too 



Crimes of the Border 185 

uncertain, and Fink was " removed " by a friend of the 
murdered man. He also went unpunished. Mike 
Fink was once convicted for shooting off a negro's 
heel as he was standing on the wharf. He gave as 
his justification, that the darky's heel projected too 
far behind, preventing him from w^earing a genteel 
boot, and he wished to correct the defect. Such 
marksmen as these used to pride themselves on " bark- 
ing a squirrel " — that is shooting so close to it, without 
scratching it, that the animal was killed by concussion. 
They were fond of snuffing a candle, at fifty yards, 
for the drinks. 

As horses were the most necessary possession of the 
new settler, the loss of an animal meant great hardship 
and was desperately resented. Until the middle of 
the last century, farmers in the outlying districts 
suffered from the depredations of horse-thieves. They 
w^ere the boldest of all the marauders of the border. 
They often went in gangs, rode away with the best 
horses in the neighborhood, and divided the plunder 
among them. Stringent laws were passed for their 
punishment. The code was, that a man who was 
guilty of stealing a horse should be whipped fifty to 
one hundred lashes; for a second offence, hanging 
was the penalty. Receiving stolen horses was a 
crime punishable by death. Very often the thief was 
whipped, and then drummed out of the country. 

In the earliest time, when courts were few and 
distant, the people often took the law into their own 
hands, and were regularly organized into " Regulators." 
These bands hunted down marauders. They also 
often held court, very informally, for flagrant mis- 
demeanors, and Judge Lynch executed sentence. 
The lash was considered very efficacious in 1816, 



i86 Historic Indiana 

and was the punishment imposed by law universally. 
Twenty strokes were given and a fine of five dollars 
was added for altering bounds. For manslaughter, a 
man was branded in the hand with the letters M. S. 

Prompt measures often checked further disturbance 
to the settlers. A story is told of a frontier judge 
whose common-sense rulings stopped the incursions of 
one gang. Indiana was still a Territory. The country 
was a wilderness, except a few posts and settlements. 
Governor William Henry Harrison had moved to 
Vincennes, as the Executive of the Territory. The 
country was filled with Indians, friendly and hostile, 
when a gang of desperate horse-thieves from Ken- 
tucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia began to 
cross the river and steal and drive away the horses of 
the white men and Indians, indiscriminately. The 
settlers were for lynch law and hanging, or at least 
whipping; but the opinion of the Governor, that the 
laws should be enforced upon the offenders, prevailed, 
and many thieves were taken and confined, ready 
for the sitting of the court. At the next term, trial 
after trial, with convictions, was held, but the United 
States Attorney was a young green lawyer, and every 
conviction was followed by successful motions in 
arrest of judgment, for some defect in the indictments. 
The clamor against the court reached the ears of the 
judge and he resigned, when General Marston G. 
Clark, a cousin of General George Rogers Clark, was, 
by consent, appointed judge to fill the vacancy. The 
General was no lawyer — ^was brought up in the woods 
of Kentucky, could scarcely read a chapter in the 
Bible, and wrote his name as large as John Hancock's 
in the Declaration of Independence. He was about 
six feet in his stockings, very muscular — wore a hunting- 



Crimes of the Border 187 

shirt, leather pants, moccasins, and a foxskin cap, with 
a long queue down his back. Court came on, Judge 
Clark on the bench. The jail was full of horse-thieves. 
The penalty was not less than thirty-nine lashes on 
the bare back. The grand jury turned into court 
indictments against each of the prisoners. Here is 
an account of the proceedings : 

"Judge Clark — ' We will try John Long first, as he seems 
to be a leader in this business. Bring him into court." 
Sheriff — ' There he sits, I brought him with me. John 
Long, stand up.' — ' You are indicted for stealing an Indian 
pony; guilty or not guilty?' Counsel — 'May it please 
the Court, we plead in abatement that his name is John 
H. Long.' — 'That makes no difference; I know the man, 
and that is sufficient.' — 'We then move to quash the 
indictment before he pleads in chief.' — ' State your ob- 
jections.' — ' First. There is no value of the horse laid. 
Second. It is charged in the indictment to be a horse, 
when he is a gelding.' — ' I know an Indian pony is worth 
ten dollars; and I shall consider that a gelding is a horse; 
motion overruled.' Plea of not guilty; jury impan- 
elled; evidence heard; proof positive; verdict, guilty; 
thirty-nine lashes on his bare back. Counsel — 'We move 
in arrest of judgment, on the ground that it is not charged 
in the indictment that the horse was stolen in the Territory 
of Indiana.' — 'That I consider a more serious objection 
than any you have made yet. I will consider on it till 
morning. Sheriff, adjourn the court, and keep the prisoner 
safe till court meets.' The judge kept his seat till the 
sheriff returned from the jail. — ' Sheriff, at twelve o'clock 
to-night you and your deputy take Long into the woods, 
clear out of hearing, and give him thirty-nine lashes on 
his bare back, well laid on; put him in jail again; say 
nothing, but bring him into court in the morning.' The 
•order was obeyed to the very letter, and the next morning 



i88 Historic Indiana 

Long was in the box when court opened, his counsel ig- 
norant of what had taken place. Judge Clark — ' I have 
been thinking of the motion in arrest, in the case of Long; 
I have some doubts that the evidence proved that he did 
steal the horse in this Territory, and I think I ought not 
to sustain a motion that, I understand, will discharge the 
prisoner after he has been found guilty by the jury, but 
I feel bound to grant a new trial.' — Long, springing to 
his feet, cried out : ' Oh, no, for heaven's sake ! I am whipped 
almost to death already. I discharge my attorneys and 
withdraw their motion.' Judge Clark — ' Clerk, enter the 
judgment on the verdict, and mark it satisfied.' The 
other prisoners were brought up in succession, and con- 
victed. No motion to quash, or in arrest, was afterward 
made. The prisoners were whipped and discharged, 
carrying with them the news to all of their comrades. 
Not a horse was stolen in the Territory for years after- 
ward." 1 

Sometimes the self -constituted " Regulators " were 
the ones who were in the wrong. One of the most 
substantial men of the whole countryside in central 
Indiana was for many years pointed out as the man 
who had been hung and yet was alive. His history 
was that in the early times, before the days of rail- 
roads and mail communication, he had gone overland 
to the Territory of Illinois. He had journeyed with 
another man who drove his own team of horses, hitched 
to his spring wagon. They investigated the prairie 
lands and the stranger decided to settle there; but 
the man from Indiana preferred to return to his own 
section. He purchased the horses and wagon, from 
the man, and drove back to his former neighborhood- 
From the intimations of some evil-disposed persons, 

' Smith, Oliver H., Early Trials, page i6o. Cincinnati, 1858. 



Crimes of the Border 189 

who wished to do the young man a harm, the report 
gained credence that he had murdered the stranger 
out on the lonely plains and taken the vehicle and 
horses. Of course he stoutly denied the slanderous 
story, but it grew with the telling of it, until the word 
went around that the whole tale was known to be 
true. The Regulators took it up, and seized the young 
man for murder and horse-stealing. Because he ad- 
mitted that he had no witnesses to prove his innocence 
of the terrible charges, the border rufifians put a rope 
around his neck, passed it over the limb of a tree, and 
hanged him. After a few awful seconds, they eased up 
on the rope and let him down on to the ground. Some 
of the less cruel ones in the crowd tried to resuscitate 
the victim. Their efforts were rewarded with signs 
of life, and when the man could speak again, he prom- 
ised them that, if they would give him a chance to 
have a court trial, he would take them to the spot 
where he had buried the man ! This was news indeed. 
The next day a posse of men went with the accused, 
and after a long journey across country he led them 
about from one settler's cabin to another, until he 
found and produced the man, alive and well, whom 
they had accused him of killing! He explained to 
them that he had only promised them that he would 
point out the burial-place just to gain time and an 
opportunity to convince them of his innocence by 
showing them the man. He told them that he rec- 
ognized the fact that in their unreasonable frame 
of mind it was the only way to secure a reprieve 
long enough to clear himself for all time. 

In early days, counterfeiting seemed to be a most 
fascinating way of making money easily. Driving 
through the lonely districts of the State, in after years. 



190 Historic Indiana 

a mysterious cave or a deserted cabin would be pointed 
out to the traveller as the place where some noted 
counterfeiter's band had been taken "red-handed." 
Desperate characters, who would dare to pass off 
spurious currency, would ally themselves with a more 
or less skilled engraver with a moral bias; and while 
he plied his expert trade in seclusion, the "gang" 
would roam to other parts, and buy guns, ammunition, 
horses, or lands with the false coin or scrip. The 
price he paid the men was generally " sixteen to one," 
but in counterfeit dollars. In Mr. Howe's tales of 
The Great West, he gives an account of one of the 
most successful of these counterfeiters, named Stude- 
vant, who lived in several States — as the exigencies 
of his business demanded, — but whose imitation cur- 
rency was circulated all over Indiana. Mr. Howe 
says that he was a man of talent and address, pos- 
sessed mechanical genius, was an expert artist, skilled 
in some of the sciences, and excelled as an engraver. 
For several years he resided in secluded spots, where 
all of his immediate neighbors were his confederates, 
or persons whose friendship he had conciliated. At 
any time, by the blowing of a horn, he could summon 
from fifty to a hundred armed men to his defence. 
He was a grave, quiet, inoffensive-looking man, who 
commanded the obedience of his comrades and the 
respect of his neighbors. He had a very excellent 
farm; his house was one of the best in the country. 

' ' Yet this man was the most notorious counterfeiter that 
ever infested the country, and he carried on his nefarious 
art to an extent which no other person ever attempted. 
His confederates were scattered over the whole Western 
country, receiving, through regular channels of inter- 
course, their regular supplies of counterfeit bank-notes. 



Crimes of the Border 191 

for which they paid him a stipulated price — sixteen dollars 
in cash for one hundred in counterfeit bills. His security 
arose partly from his caution in not allowing his subordi- 
nates to pass a counterfeit bill or do any other unlawful 
act in the State in which he lived — measures which effect- 
ually protected him from the civil authority,"^ 

But he became a great nuisance from the immense 
quantity of spurious paper which he threw into cir- 
culation; and Studevant, though he escaped the arm 
of the law, was at last, with all his unprincipled con- 
federates driven from the country by the enraged 
people. As late as 1840, a man who had been passing 
counterfeit money, in payment for labor, supplies, 
and implements, made a narrow escape from the 
officers of the law. They had traced the offence to 
some passenger on the boat which had landed at the 
last town and they boarded the canal boat. Immedi- 
ately the guilty one recognized the officers, and before 
they could identify him he slipped into the hold of 
the boat, and secreted himself in the part where the 
mules were kept. As soon as it was dark, so that he 
could not be seen by the passengers on deck, he slipped 
into the water, unfastened the belt from around his 
waist, in which the false coin was secreted, and dropped 
it silently into the waves. This done, and no traces 
of his guilt remaining, the man swam to shore and 
disappeared in the shadows of the forest. The officers 
of the law were baffled; the guilty man reappeared 
later, and pursued his career of amassing wealth. 

Travellers in those early days travelled overland 
on horseback, or later by driving. They almost always 
carried their funds with them, in the form of coin 

> Howe, H., The Great West. 



192 Historic Indiana 

or currency, as there were few banks to honor checks 
or drafts. This fact was well known, and often promp- 
ted highway robbery. The well-known stage driver, 
Winslow, once had a large sum in coin to carry over- 
land. When stopping at the tavern for dinner, he 
took off his overshoes and slipped a sack of gold into 
each shoe. He carried the shoes in his hand into the 
dining-room, placed them under his feet at table, where 
he could feel the money safely resting, and no one was 
the wiser of his treasure. The bandits generally plied 
their trade in twos and threes. They would often 
stop at the same tavern, with the man of business, 
learn the direction he was going, and ride on ahead, or 
join him socially as he was leaving. When well out 
of hearing of any settlement, or in some lonely spot, 
the thief would be joined by a confederate, and after 
a struggle they would secure the booty. Sometimes 
mine host of the inn was in partnership with the 
outlaws, and many a citizen has lodged where he 
would not allow himself to fall asleep for fear of an 
attack. Travellers in those days always provided 
for such alarms by wearing a brace of pistols and a 
bowie-knife; the money was carried in a belt about 
the waist, or in the saddle-bags. Hardy frontiersmen 
were often as good shots as the freebooters, and de- 
clined in vigorous fashion to surrender their posses- 
sions, and there would be one less robber on the 
highway after such an encounter. Prairie bandits 
infested Newton and Jasper counties, within the 
memory of some of the citizens now living in those 
sections. Many of the streams in Indiana were 
spanned by heavy wooden bridges which were covered, 
both on the sides and roof, to preserve the timbers. 
These long tunnel-like structures are now fast dis- 



Crimes of the Border 193 

appearing before the modem iron bridges, but they 
were almost universal in an earlier day. They proved 
a refuge in time of storm, and a source of terror 
to many a faint heart who had heard tales of high- 
way robbery committed in their dark interiors. 

One of these stories is so typical that it must be re- 
counted. A well-to-do citizen, had sold his cattle in the 
great market at Cincinnati, and was feeling so good over 
his returns for the year that he bought some "store 
goods " for the goodwife at home, had a round game 
of poker at the tavern, and started homeward. It 
was later than he would have had the hardihood to 
attempt had he not imbibed a drop too much over 
the friendly game. Owing to these circumstances 
the farmer did not reach the inn, where he was ac- 
customed to "put up for the night" on his regular 
trips. The darkness fell when he was emerging from 
the hills, and where the lands were so poor that no 
one was very prosperous. Consequently, the land- 
lord of the log tavern was not above suspicion. But 
convivial indulgence had limited the hours of day 
and determined the stopping-place for the night. Our 
traveller entered the hostelry with suspicion, which 
turned into foreboding after supper was over, and 
he surveyed the groups about the bar-room, A lame 
peddler asleep on his pack was the most innocent 
guest about the fire, and he looked like a cutthroat. 
The keeper of the road-house was playing a desperate 
game of cards with some men who turned out to be 
confederates of his in waylaying travellers. The 
man of means slept with his pistols ready and arose 
weary in the dawn to resume his journey. Against 
his wishes, two of the men who were at the card- 
table the night before rode out of the stables, as he 



194 Historic Indiana 

was leaving, and hallooed him as a fellow traveller. 
They rode along but a few miles when they said they 
must turn off at the crossroads, and, much to his relief, 
bade him adieu. Five miles down the road, where 
the way narrowed into one of those long bridges, 
a bear ran across from a thicket, pursued by three 
hunters. Our traveller's horse shied at the animal, 
ran into the bridge, and threw his rider heavily against 
the timbers, just as the highwaymen thought he 
would. But the man was not so unconscious from 
the fall as they had hoped. When they were absorbed 
in rifling his saddle-bags, he raised on one arm, and 
drawing his big horse-pistol shot two of the thieves, 
and was wounded by the third. With this one he 
then entered into a life-and-death struggle. Both 
men were so furiously engaged that they did not 
hear the approach of a settler who had heard the 
shots, and, knowing the presence in the woods of 
the gang of outlaws, had crept up to the entrance of 
the bridge to see what was going on. Realizing the 
desperate straits of the traveller, he clipped off the 
brigand with his rifle and ended the life of the last 
one of the thieves that had infested the neighborhood 
for months. The bear was part of their plot to take 
travellers at a disadvantage, for he was a pet and 
had often been used. One of those who lay dead 
was the landlord of the tavern. The two others were 
his guests of the night before, all disguised as half- 
breed Indians. 

Along the Wabash there were many rough-and- 
tumble fights among the belligerent Irish who were 
brought in to dig the canal. These immigrants were 
in no sense highwaymen, their "ructions" were gen- 
erally en masse, a free-for-all fight without warning, 



Crimes of the Border 195 

and generally without any provocation — unless it was 
cheap whiskey. A misunderstanding was enough 
to set them all at loggerheads, and soon the whole 
gang would be using their shillalahs. An old citizen 
of the Wabash tells the following incident, which 
is so very characteristic of these laborers from Erin 
that it may be accepted as typical of scores of other 
occurrences. In 1834 there had been a freshet suf- 
ficient to float a steamboat as far up the river as Peru 
and Chief Godfrey's village. The steamboat was 
just leaving the little town of Peru for the return 
trip. He tells the tale in this wise : 

" I made haste to get on board, and just as I was step- 
ping on board the plank that led on to the boat, a fight 
commenced between a party that came up from Logans- 
port and some Peruvians, which blocked up the gangway 
so that I could not get on the boat. The excitement ran 
high throughout the crowd. The Logansport party was 
about to prove too hard for their antagonists, who began 
to sing out for help. There were several hundred Irish- 
men near at hand, working on the Wabash and Erie canal, 
who, observing the foray, and considering it a free fight, 
could no longer resist the temptation to pitch in; and 
gathering their picks and spades, they rushed in platoons 
upon the belligerents, and soon vanquished the party 
that had proved strongest in the melee, compelling them 
to betake themselves to the boat, in double-quick time, 
shouting, 'The Greek, the Greek.' On looking up and 
down the line of the canal for a mile and a half in either 
direction, Irish recruits were seen pressing for the scene 
of action, with picks in their hands and wrath on their 

faces. 'We will sink your d d dugout, be jabers' 

rung like a knell upon the ears of the astonished boat 
crew, who at the Captain's command pulled in the plank 
and pushed off into the river, to keep the enraged Hiber- 



196 Historic Indiana 

nians from demolishing his vessel. At first the boat dropped 
slowly along with the current, and the Captain motioned 
for those who had failed to get on board to follow along 
the shore where he would land and take them on."^ 

From the time that Indiana came into the Union 
a free State, there were crimes committed continually 
in the kidnapping of free negroes within the State, 
and selling them into Southern slavery. Sometimes 
the ignorant blacks were persuaded to go aboard 
river boats to work, in some instances they were 
carried forcibly by outlaws across the river, in all 
cases, when once over the line, they were taken in 
bands to the Cotton States and heard of no more. 
This lucrative iniquity, as Captain Lemcke termed 
it, was very profitable, and the guilty bands of 
desperadoes would cross from one State to another, 
eluding pursuit. It is said that they were regularly 
organized, having rendezvous and passwords, leaders, 
and methods of distributing the spoils of their trade 
in human suffering. As late as 1833, an attempt was 
made to steal two black boys from a field as far north 
as the Wea plains. After the Fugitive Slave Law 
of 1850 was passed, there were great numbers of 
slave-hunters raiding the border States under the 
authority of that obnoxious statute. It continued 
to be a disastrous time for negroes, who were enticed 
from their own masters, then claimed as runaway 
slaves and sold by their persecutors into slavery; 
some negroes were resold three and four times at a 
thousand dollars apiece. Fortunately the abolition 
of slavery ended these crimes. 

> Cox, Sanford C, Recollections of the Wabash Valley, page 145. 
La Fayette, 1861. 



Crimes of the Border 197 

Immigration was so continuous and the population 
increased so rapidly that Indiana very early passed 
from the condition of a border State, and excepting 
the outrages by isolated bands of white-cappers in 
the hill counties, the crimes peculiar to a frontier 
country ceased. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE TRAIL — FROM BIRCH-BARK CANOE TO ELECTRIC 
TROLLEY 

THE pirogue of the French coureurs des bois 
gliding athwart the Indians' birch-bark canoe, 
on the gently flowing Ouabache, is the earliest 
picture of the first modes of travel in Indiana. It 
was only on foot or by boat that there was any way 
of penetrating the wilderness, for many decades 
following its exploration. The American aborigines 
had no horses at the time of the discovery, and when 
they first saw the Spanish soldier on horseback, the 
natives thought horse and rider were one, and im- 
agined they were gods. When the Indian learned 
the usefulness of the horse in covering distances with- 
out the fatigue of long marches, it became his most 
valued possession, and appealed to his cupidity to 
secure by any means in his power, be it theft or mur- 
der. The deftness and skill shown by the Indians 
in fashioning their birch-bark canoes and dugouts 
indicated the experience of ages of savage ancestry. 
Into the Indiana region, birch canoes must be brought 
from the north and east, but the natives there made 
canoes of hickory or elm bark turned inside out ; and 
their dugouts were fashioned from the trunks of large 



The Trail 199 

trees, hollowed out by burning and scraping, and the 
ends pointed with their stone axes. These pirogues 
were long and strong, and as claimed by a traveller, 
"required us and everything in them to be exactly in 
the bottom and then to look straight forward and 
speak from the middle of our mouth, or they were other 
side up in an instant." The rivers could tell many 
tales of adventure, of battle, and of romance, but they 
are all silent about the long procession of French fur- 
traders, Spanish merchants, British soldiers, and 
American settlers, whose primitive barques have 
glided down the Indiana waters into oblivion. There 
are many old settlers still living, who recount lively 
tales of the commerce by boat when the homes were 
being pre-empted along the streams. When the 
American colonists opened up the forests for farming, 
they brought beasts of burden to their aid. There 
was only a ' ' blazed traice ' ' through the trees for many 
years, and the universal means of transportation 
across the country to the river landing was by horse- 
back. The Indian understood so thoroughly the 
topography of the country, that the white man could 
rarely improve on the routes which his stealthy foot- 
steps had traced through the forests for ages. Along 
those narrow defiles, on horseback, until the boat 
was reached, the commerce of the West was carried 
for more than a century and a half. The early Amer- 
ican settlers in Indiana followed the same natural 
outlets to the sea that the French had before them. 
They brought rowboats with them, and the shaping 
of canoes was learned from the Indians; but the 
settlers soon astonished the savages by a new craft. 
These were the flatboats, which were shaped like 
scows, sometimes having a shed over the centre of 



200 Historic Indiana 

the craft. Of these useful boats, so well adapted to 
the shallow streams, it was quaintly said that they 
drew about as much water as a sap trough. There 
was a long steering oar at the stem of the boat, and 
a sufficient number of side oars to propel it, with 
the help of a pole, which was handled by a man who 
stood in the stem, to push over sand-bars and ob- 
structions. Wags used to say that these boats, in 
going down-stream, managed to keep up with the 
current. Coming up-stream, the boats were cordelled, 
as the French boatmen had named the process of 
towing by hand. There was scarcely a man of large 
undertakings but shipped his fleet of flatboats, rafts, 
and scows down the Mississippi to market. There 
he sold his produce, bartered for supplies for his 
neighborhood, and came back by rowboat, or mayhap 
walked the entire distance home, as did Abraham 
Lincoln. Mr. Henry T. Sample, a veteran pork packer, 
told the writer that he had walked from New Orleans 
to the Wabash country sixteen times. 

Before a merchant left on one of these tours, weeks 
and months were consumed in bartering for his cargo 
of grain, pelts, venison, bear's grease, lard, flour, and 
pork; also in gathering the great rafts of logs, to 
be taken down and sold for their lumber. Pork-pack- 
ing for export to the seaboard was, during the win- 
ter season, the most lucrative industry of river 
towns, and it laid the foundation of many early for- 
tunes. Three hundred barrels of pork was the usual 
load for the average flatboat, and that product was 
one tenth of the export trade, and another tenth 
was lard. Com was the great crop of Indiana, then 
as now, and from five to ten thousand bushels of corn 
could be carried on one of these boats. Cattle, horses, 



The Trail 201 

oats, venison hams, hickory nuts, and walnuts made 
up the balance of the annual $1,000,000 trade by 
flatboat. 

Many boats were collected to make up these fleets. 
It took nearly a month to pole this type of craft to 
New Orleans, and the merchant capitalist generally 
accompanied his cargo and crew. The flatboats were 
generally sold or abandoned at the end of the journey. 
A return cargo of sugar, tobacco, rice, furniture, and 
dry goods was brought up the river on the return 
trip, in rowboats, or keel boats poled and pulled by 
oars or sweeps, at a snail-like pace. These boats 
made a long hard journey up-stream, and the labor 
w^as excessive. By avoiding the swift current and 
keeping close to the shore, and employing oars, poles, 
and a cordelle or tow line, a distance of six miles 
was all that could be made in a day ! "I shall long 
remember," writes Captain Lemcke, "the low-lying 
islands, tedious bends, long reaches, treacherous cut- 
offs, and bristling snags ; the confusing fogs, and the 
sombre density of the unbroken forests," ^ 

The first line of "Packet Boats " on the Ohio River, 
in which Indiana people were carried to their new 
homes, was advertised in 1793. These were flatboats 
for hire, to accommodate passengers. They were to 
leave Cincinnati every Saturday for Pittsburgh, and 
one month was the required time for a round trip ! In 
the advertisement of the new line of transports, we 
have a picture of the border life. The management 
stated that no danger could be apprehended from 
the enemy, as every person on board would be under 
cover, made proof against rifle or musket balls, and 

1 Lemcke, J. A., Reminiscences of an Indianian, page 142. Indian- 
apolis, 1905. 



202 Historic Indiana 

that there were portholes for firing out! They were 
also amply supplied with ammunition and strongly 
manned with choice hands to fight the Indians! A 
separate cabin was to be portioned off for the accom- 
modation of the ladies. This enterprising line of up- 
to-date boats did not always go on schedule time, 
as there is a record extant that the packet which was 
to leave November 30th did not get away until De- 
cember loth, and the passengers had to await its 
departure ! 

From twelve to fifteen hundred flatboats a year 
went from the White River, and the Wabash country, 
to New Orleans. The Emigrants' Guide, published in 
1832, said that at least one thousand flatboats entered 
the Ohio from the Wabash in one month in the previous 
spring. When a fleet would be ready, all the village 
would assemble on the bank of the river to see it de- 
part on its long journey, and be there again to welcome 
the weary boatmen upon their return. 

We can imagine the lively interest taken in the 
contents of the return load, with its barrels of syrup, 
sacks of coffee, quaint Chinese boxes of tea, its sugar 
loaves, and all its suggestions of the outside world, 
so remote from their wilderness home. China and 
silks from France, mahogany and silver from England, 
found their way, as time went on, into the river hamlets 
of this far West. 

During these days, the travel across country being 
on horseback, the invariable outfit of the traveller 
was a pair of saddle-bags which could be thrown 
across the horse, to carry the rider's wardrobe and 
papers. His limbs were always wrapped in leggins 
of heavy green baize cloth, now no longer sold ; these 
were to protect his clothing from the mud. If it 



The Trail 203 

were wintry weather he wore a buffalo overcoat and 
coonskin cap. The early preachers and lawyers, 
whose calling made it necessary for them to "ride 
the circuit," came to know the best trail through 
the woods, just how their horses would ford the 
streams, and where the most hospitable cabins were 
located, from whose occupants they could ask a night's 
lodging. 

A new epoch dawned in transportation for the 
inhabitants along the Ohio River when they hailed, 
with eager curiosity and delight, the first steamboat, 
which was run from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, in 
the year 181 1. It was built by a relative of the 
President, Nicholas J. Roosevelt, and made the 
trip in the wonderful time of fourteen days. For 
several years there were other small steamboats ply- 
ing on the river, but fiatboats and barges continued 
to be the principal means of transportation, as the 
small rivers were always too shallow to make it prof- 
itable to use steam for propelling their craft. Mr. 
Dunn says that no steamboat ascended the Wabash 
until the summer of 1823. When it came the villagers 
gathered on the river banks to welcome the new- 
fashioned transport, — the w^onderful new craft which 
could go up-stream as well as down! How was the 
flatboat to stand against such a competitor? Now 
prosperity would bless the frontier! 

Mr. Condit tells us in a graphic way the effect upon 
the savages: 

" The barge or keel-boat, and the skiffs, though they 
had surprised the Indians, yet they neither alarmed nor 
offended them, but upon the first appearance of the steam- 
boat, breathing out its white steam, black smoke, and 
belching forth its red fiery sparks, the poor affrighted 



204 Historic Indiana 

Indian fled as from a huge unearthly monster. Even 
after explanations and assurances were given, and he had 
become somewhat acquainted with its working, he was 
still superstitious and fearful, and persisted in believing 
that this ugly, threatening creature was an offence to the 
gentle river." ^ 

To the white man, it was a wonderfully advanced 
method of reaching the outside world, and brought 
a great increase in population and prosperity; and 
soon regular packet boats had their appointed days 
of arrival and departure. When Nathaniel Bolton's 
mother came west in 1820, she refused to travel on 
the steamboat, thinking it a dangerous-looking craft, 
and her husband secured transportation on a timber 
boat. Upon this, her daughter records, the family 
floated down the river quite comfortably. The rude 
craft had fireplaces at each end, in front of which they 
did their cooking. In a few years it came to be a 
regular event for a fleet of steamers to be seen wending 
its way up the Wabash, laden with passengers and 
merchandise. When the boats from New Orleans 
would pull up at the wharf at La Fayette — which 
was the head of navigation for the larger steamers — 
the whole landing was the scene of liveliest interest. 
Barrels of sugar, coffee, molasses, and tobacco would 
be unloaded, and rolled up along the side of Main 
Street, for blocks away. The odor of teas and savory 
spices pervaded the air. Mysterious bales and boxes, 
suggestive of new fashions and fabrics, lined the ap- 
proaches to the wharf. The names of some of these 
old steamers are still remembered; as, the Pmd Pry, 

> Condit, Blackford, D. D., History of Early Terre Haute, page 
26. New York, 1900. 



The Trail 205 

the Daniel Boone, the William Tell, the Facility, and 
many whose names suggested the frontier, and whose 
whistles could be recognized a mile away by all 
of the small boys along the shore. The youth of the 
river towns aspired to the career of being steamboat 
captains. As Captain Lemcke recalls, from an early 
day, it was the ardent wish and nightly dream of 
every barefooted boy on the banks of the rivers to 
be or become the commander of one of these fiery 
dragons with glittering interior. 

In the towns located on the rivers were great ware- 
houses, generally owned by the leading capitalist of 
the town. They were built as places of storage for 
every kind of river merchandise, and costly freight 
and furniture that had voyaged, said William Tark- 
ington, from New England down the long coast, 
across the Mexican Gulf, through the flat delta. They 
had made the winding journey up the great river a 
thousand miles; and almost a thousand miles more 
up the great and lesser tributaries. There was in this 
cargo cloth brought from Connecticut; and Ten- 
nessee cotton, on its way to Massachusetts and Rhode 
Island spindles. These imports lay there beside huge 
mounds of raw wool, from near-by flocks, ready for 
the local mills. Dates and nuts from the Caribbean 
Sea, lemons from the tropics, cigars from the Antilles, 
tobacco from Virginia and Kentucky were on the 
wharf; and most precious of all, the farmers' wheat 
from the home fields. This was the commerce of 
the Indiana rivers, as carried on in the packets and 
steamboats, before the days of railroads. The first 
steamboats were little, ill-smelling, craft, with a 
single dining-cabin, around which was a row of berths, 
hidden by faded curtains. Early in the forties, 



2o6 Historic Indiana 

however, there were announced the splendid three- 
decked monarchs of the rivers, surpassing in luxury 
any sea-going vessel. The most picturesque life was 
then on the river. Taking trips by boat was a 
novelty. Society often went afloat, and the proven- 
der was fine. There was always music on the big 
boats, and an almost permanent feature was the 
singing of the crew as the steamer landed or resumed 
her course in the channel. One of the favorite songs 
of the deck hands was : 

"The Captain's in a hurry, and I know what he means; 
He wants to beat the other boat down to New Orleans. 
Then, roll out and heave that cotton. 
Roll out and heave that cotton. 
For we ain't got time to stay." 

When the first steamboat went down the Ohio 
River, it made the seven hundred miles from Pitts- 
burgh to Louisville in seventy hours, down-stream. 
A citizen of the place, at that time, has left an account 
of the impression that the wonderful new craft made 
on the frontier people. He says that the novel ap- 
pearance of the vessel, and the fearful rapidity with 
which it made its passage over the broad reaches of 
the river, excited a mixture of terror and surprise 
among the people gathered on the banks, w^hom the 
rumor of such an invention had never reached. On 
the unexpected arrival of the vessel before Louisville, 
near midnight on a still moonlight night, the extra- 
ordinary sound which filled the air as the pent-up 
steam was suffered to escape from the valves on round- 
ing to produced a general alarm, and multitudes rose 
from their beds to ascertain the cause. It is said the 
general impression was, that the comet had fallen 




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The Trail 207 

into the Ohio. The comet had been the sensation 
of the year. 

As the steamboats became factors in the life along 
the tributaries of the Mississippi River the frontier 
settlements rejoiced in their touch with the outside 
world. A writer in the Western Monthly Review, 
in 1827, said: 

" An Atlantic cit, who talks of us under the name of 
backwoodsmen, would not believe, that such fairy struc- 
tures of oriental gorgeousness and splendor as the Wash- 
ington, the Walk in the Water, the Lady of the Lake, etc., 
etc., had ever existed in the imagination, much less that 
they were in actual existence, rushing down the river, as 
on the wings of the wind, or plowing up between the 
forests, bearing speculators, merchants, dandies, fine 
ladies, everything in the form of humanity, with pianos, 
stocks of novels, and cards, and dice, and flirting, and love- 
making, and champagne drinking, and on deck perhaps 
three hundred fellows who have seen alligators, and neither 
fear whiskey, nor gunpowder. A steamboat coming from 
New Orleans brings to the remotest villages of our streams, 
and the very doors of our cabins, a little of Paris, a section 
of Broadway, or a slice of Philadelphia, to ferment in the 
minds of our young people the innate propensity for 
fashions and finery."^ 

Steamboats reduced the freight rates along the rivers 
to one third the former price. The great impetus to 
agriculture created a surplus which developed the 
interior of the country, and attracted so many settlers 
that by 1835 the exports had accomplished the eco- 
nomic independence of the United States. 

As may be imagined, all this traffic did not go on 

• Western Moitthly Review, May, 1827, i., 25. 



2o8 Historic Indiana 

without frights and delays and accidents. There vfere 
whole months when the rivers were so low that snags 
and sandbars endangered craft of the lightest d^aft. 
In fact the old joke about the boats being obliged 
to run on a hea\^ dew originated along these Western 
streams, where there were such extremes of low water 
and great freshets. One accident on the Ohio River, 
near where EvansviTle stands, was of national interest. 
It was in the year 1825, when the illustrious General 
La Fayette was touring the country, as the guest of 
the grateful nation. The General and a distinguished 
party of civilians and military men were on board the 
steamboat Mechanic, coming up the river. It was 
in the month of May and all the passengers had retired 
for the night; suddenly the boat struck a snag in the 
very middle of the stream, and immediately began 
to settle. The night was dark, most of the travellers 
and crew were asleep, and the call of danger caused 
great confusion. General La Fayette was hurried on 
deck, and helped over the side of the steamboat, where 
a small boat had been launched to take him ashore. 
In the haste and excitement, he fell overboard, and 
was nearly drowned before assistance reached him. 
The General lost all of his effects, and eight thousand 
dollars in money, as did the captain, who also suffered 
the loss of his steamer. 

Travel on the steamboats was more picturesque 
than on the modem railway. The voyage w^as long, 
and people took time to draw leisurely breaths of 
enjoyment. There was usually a pleasure party on 
board. Sometimes they were bound for the Mardi- 
Gras. They danced, they flirted, and they always 
gambled. An old traveller recalls that every boat 
had its corps of courteous, low-voiced, well-dressed 



The Trail 209 

gentlemen, who lived by "running the river." The 
traveller who knew them excused himself from playing 
with them; if he did not know them, he paid the 
penalty. The "river blackleg" was the typical sinner 
of that day. He was recognized as an emissary of 
Hell, and pointed the moral of many a sermon. 

No one has pictured the traffic by steamboat so 
graphically as Mark Twain. He makes one live over 
again those deliberate times when the commerce was 
spasmodic, and the sleepy towns drowsed between 
arrivals of the transport. We see how presently a 
film of dark smoke appears above a remote point, 
some lusty wagoner on the lookout for trade yells, 
" S-t-e-a-m-b-o-a-t a-comin'," and the scene changes. 
The town drunkards stir; the clerks wake up; a 
furious clatter of drays follows. Every house and 
store pours out its human contribution, and all in a 
twinkling the dead town is alive and moving. Drays, 
carts, men, boys all go hurrying from all quarters to 
a common centre, the wharf. After the cargo is un- 
loaded, and new freight and passengers taken on, the 
boat steams aw^ay over the placid waters, and the town 
resumes its normal state. 

Mr. Cottman has given an interesting account of 
river navigation in Indiana, and the vital importance 
which that form of transportation assumed in early 
days. Among other things, he tells of the strenuous 
insistence on considering, as navigable, streams that 
were hopelessly useless for such purpose, ofttimes 
approaching the ludicrous. As an example, Indian- 
apolis, for nearly two decades after its founding, 
would have White River a highway of commerce, in 
spite of nature and the inability of craft to get over 
ripples, sandbars, and drifts. As early as 1820, it 



2IO Historic Indiana 

was officially declared navigable. In 1825, Alexander 
Ralston, the surveyor, was appointed to make a 
thorough inspection of the river and to report in 
detail at the next session of the legislature. The 
sanguine hopes that were nourished at the young 
capital are shown by existing records. 

" For three years past efforts had been made by Noah 
Noble to induce steamboats to ascend the river, and . . . 
very liberal offers had been made by that gentleman to 
the first steamboat captain who would ascend the river 
as far as this place. ... As early as February, 1827, 
he offered the Kanawha Salt Company $150 as an induce- 
ment to send a load of salt, agreeing to sell the salt without 
charge. 

"In 1830, Noble offered a Capt. Stephen Butler $200 
to come to Indianapolis, and $100 in addition if Nobles- 
ville and Anderson were reached, though what efforts 
were made to earn these bonuses is not known. From 
time to time the newspapers made mention of boats which, 
according to rumor, got ' almost ' to the capital and 
eventually one made for itself a historic reputation by 
performing the much-desired feat. This one was the 
General Hanna, a craft which Robert Hanna, a well-known 
character in early politics, had purchased for the purpose 
of bringing stones up the river for the old National road 
bridge. The Hanna, which in addition to its own loading, 
towed up a heavily-laden keel-boat, arrived April 11, 
1 83 1, and, according to a contemporary chronicle, every 
man, woman, and child who could possibly leave home 
availed themselves of this opportunity of gratifying a 
laudable curosity to see a steamboat. On Monday evening 
and during the most of the succeeding day, the river bank 
was filled with delighted spectators. Captain Blythe and the 
artillery company marched down and fired salutes. The 
leading citizens and the boats' crew peppered each other 



The Trail 211 

with elegant, formal compliments, and the former, in 
approved parliamentary style, ' Resolved, That the arrival 
at Indianapolis of the Steamboat General Hanna, from 
Cincinnati, should be viewed by the citizens of the White 
River country and of our State at large, as a proud 
triumph and as a fair and unanswerable demonstration of 
the fact that our beautiful river is susceptible of safe 
navigation.' 

" A public banquet in honor of the occasion was arranged, 
and the visiting navigators invited to attend, but they 
were in haste to get out of the woods while the water 
might permit, and so declined with regrets. Legend has 
it that the boat ran aground on an island a short distance 
down the river, and there lay ignominiously for six weeks, 
and that was the last of the ' proud triumph ' and White 
River 'navigation.' 

" But despite these and many similar absurdities, the 
Indiana streams were a factor, and an important one, in 
our earlier commerce. The number of rivers and creeks 
that have been declared ' public highways ' by our legis- 
lators is a matter for surprise. An examination of the 
statutes through the twenties and thirties discloses from 
thirty to forty. According to Timothy Flint, who wrote 
in 1833, the navigable waters of the State had been rated 
at 2500 miles, and this estimate he thought moderate. 
These streams ranged in size from the Wabash to insig- 
nificant hill drains that run down the short water-shed 
into the Ohio, some of which, at the present day at least, 
would scarce float a plank. Such streams were, however, 
supposed to have sufficient volume during high water to 
float flatboats and the purpose of the legislation was to 
interdict impeding of the waterway by dams or otherwise, 
and the clearing of the channel was under State law. 
To this end many of these streams were divided into 
districts, as were the roads, and worked."^ 

> Magazine of History, 1907, Geo. S. Cottman, Editor. 



212 Historic Indiana 

That is, the streams were cleared of drifts, and other 
obstructions, by the male residents living adjacent to 
either shore. 

During all this time of steamboat commerce, the 
wagon roads were being slowly opened up through 
the forests to the river towns. The lands were so 
rich and mellow, through which the roads passed, 
that these highways were a vexation to the soul of 
the settlers for many years, until the days when they 
were made into turnpikes. In that early time the 
cattle and hogs were driven overland to the packing 
centres, the drivers walking the weary way back and 
forth. Hog driving was a separate occupation, and 
teaming was a regular business. An idea of the toil 
and weariness encountered on these overland trips 
may be gleaned from Mr. Smith's story of John Hager. 
He says: 

" As I was travelling one rainy day on horseback through 
the woods, between Indianapolis and Connersville, near 
where Greenfield now stands, I heard a loud voice before 
me, some half a mile off. My horse was wading through 
the mud and water, up to the saddle-skirts. I moved 
slowly on, until I met John Hager driving a team of four 
oxen, hauling a heavy load of merchandise, or store goods, 
as he called it, from Cincinnati to Indianapolis, then in 
the woods. He had been fifteen days on the road, and it 
would take him three days more to get through, but 
said he must move on, as they would be anxiously looking 
for him at Indianapolis, as they were nearly out of powder 
and lead when he left, and they could get none until he 
got there, as his was the only wagon that could get through 
the mud between Cincinnati and Indianapolis, and it was 
just as much as he could do. He hallooed to the oxen, 
plied the lash of his long whip, and the team moved on 



The Trail 213 

at the rate of a mile an hour — the wheels up to the hub 
in mud, carrying the whole commerce between the Queen 
city and the Railroad city of the West, in that early 
day."i 

When the Rev. Thomas Goodwin, the pioneer 
Methodist preacher, was journeying to Asbury College 
in 1837, tie passed over the roads when the fifty miles 
toward Indianapolis were one great quagmire. He 
tells the old story of the passengers having to get rails 
from the near-by fence, to help pry the stage-coach 
from the mudholes. When the wagon broke down 
beyond repair, the driver took young Goodwin's trunk 
on the horse before him, and the mail agent, with 
his mail-bag in front of him, and the student up behind, 
rode the other horse into the capital. When he reached 
his destination, he had travelled four days and two 
nights, to cover 124 miles. 

It would look very strange to the moderns, ac- 
customed as we are to rapid transit means of loco- 
motion, to see slow plodding oxen used, but in that 
day they were worked on all of the Western roads. 
Heavy loads over rough highways could be hauled 
by these strong beasts of burden even better than 
by horses. Until after the Civil War, the making of 
neck-yokes was a regular trade in every community, 
and the patient ox was a common sight on the roads. 

The fertility of the soil, which produced such 
spreading forests, shading the lands and preventing 
the equally deep soil on the roads from drying out, 
was what attracted immigration, and also what made 
it necessary to build roads, before the country could 
properly develop. Four years after the organization 

> Smith, O. H., Early Trials, page 583. Cincinnati, 1858. 



2 14 Historic Indiana 

of the State, and when it had been determined to 
place the capital inland, a real system of wagon roads 
was projected. Twenty-six turnpikes were planned 
in 1820; five were to centre at Indianapolis, the others 
were to connect the older towns of the State ; and 
the revenues for their establishment and maintenance 
w^ere designated from the sale of public lands, and a 
road tax, and labor per capita, to be rendered. As 
in other public works, the enactment of laws did not 
make good roads immediately. Travelling by land 
was still travelling by mud and water, as the depressed 
Professor Hall termed it,, at that time. Legislation 
was but a beginning. The work went slowly on through 
corduroy and toll roads, until the belated discovery 
that they had excellent gravel beds within the borders 
of the State made it improvident to have further 
delays. Even the National road limped lamely across 
Indiana; the only real work being the clearing of 
the trail, and plowing drains by the side of the road- 
way. East of the Alleghanies and across Ohio, it 
gave emigrants and commerce a famous highway 
toward the West. When Ohio and Indiana were 
admitted into the Union, Ohio fourteen years previous, 
there was a provision made by Congress reserving 
two per cent, from the sale of public lands within their 
limits, to be held and applied to the construction of 
a public highway, leading from the coast to a point 
to be designated within their borders. In 1806, 
Congress authorized President Jefferson to appoint a 
commission to lay out the best route; and the trail 
from Cumberland, Maryland, across a part of Penn- 
sylvania and Virginia, on into Ohio was chosen. It 
was eventually carried for\\'ard, in a much less thorough 
manner, and very imperfectly constructed, through 



The Trail 215 

Indiana to Vandalia, Illinois. For a half-centur>^ 
the legislation regarding this highway had dragged 
its way through political campaigns, the sessions of 
Congress, and the various legislatures. It was never 
satisfactorily constructed at full length, and was ver>^ 
shiftlessly maintained; but it served a great purpose. 
It developed a vast territory, and served as a bond of 
communication and union between the tide-water 
States and the prairies. It also connected a network 
of State roads, which gave access to the whole interior 
of the Ohio Valley. It reduced freight rates one half. 
In 1820 three thousand wagons ran from Philadelphia 
to Pittsburgh for this trade, reaching a value of eighteen 
millions annually. 

Travel was not then the matter-of-course affair of 
a few hours to the coast that it is in these days. The 
coaches driven over that old Cumberland road went 
across the mountains at the rate of five miles an 
hour, changing horses three or four times a day, and 
stopping for rest over night at the famous old way- 
side taverns. The merchant who went east in those 
days, and the belle who had spent a season in Phil- 
adelphia or Boston, were envied personages, who 
really had seen the world, had actually known life! 
If a citizen and his wife contemplated a journey to 
their old home, on the coast, it was an event to be 
planned months in advance. A new dozen of shirts, 
all of finest linen, must be hand-stitched for the jour- 
ney. His best blue broadcloth clothes, and flowered 
waistcoat, must be brushed, his gold fob polished, 
and the beaver hat remodelled and ironed. Mother 
w^ould content herself with a made-over outfit, so 
that she might purchase "brand new" peau de soie 
and French merino at the centres of fashion. Their 



2i6 Historic Indiana 

clothes were packed in the old hair trunk, studded 
with brass nails; and the things for the journey were 
placed in the huge carpet-bag of gay flowered brussels. 
In it, were letters from all of the neighborhood, to 
friends in the East; for postage was ruinously high 
then, and it was a matter of etiquette for every 
traveller to carry mail for his friends. Funds for the 
journey were carried very secretly in a belt about the 
waist, with a brace of pistols for defence against pos- 
sible highwaymen. Family and friends gathered at 
the gate to say good-bye to the travellers when the 
gay stage-coach, with its six spirited horses, drew up 
at the door with many a dash and flourish. The 
fellow-passengers, who were held in close companion- 
ship for this long journey, had plenty of time to exhaust 
topics of conversation. The talk ranged from pre- 
destination, high tariff, federalism, border wars, and 
early planting, to the latest news from the State and 
National capitals. And then there was always politics 
to be discussed, and new stories to be told. If there 
were lady passengers, no man would presume to light 
a cigar, for in those days such a lack of deference was 
unknown in America. Hospitable inns, with great 
blazing fires and a lavish table of homely fare, were 
established at intervals on the route. There is said 
to have been a score of these old taverns in Wayne 
County alone, which shows how much travel there 
was by the old National road. Recalling these jour- 
neys, an old timer mused : What stories they told, too, 
around that fire after supper! Men took time to tell 
stories in that day. Each had his half-dozen nar- 
ratives, carefully elaborated, and given with dramatic 
effect. It was something to be a raconteur on the road. 
The best drivers, too, of these coaches on the pike 




" Journeying to their new homes you passed people seated 
in the great canvas-topped Conestoga wagons." 

From an old print. 



The Trail 217 

reached a position of national distinction. Sometimes 
in lonely stretches of interminable forest, your only 
vis-a-vis might be a villainous-looking cutthroat, 
whose side glances would make one feel to see if his 
holsters were in place. Journeying to their new homes, 
you passed people seated in the great canvas-topped 
Conestoga wagons, going towards the setting sun. 

" Old America seems to be breaking up and moving 
westward," wrote Morris Birkbeck in 1817. On the 
National road he said that "we are seldom out of sight 
of family groups, behind and before us. No possessions 
but two horses and sometimes a cow or two; excepting 
a little hard-earned money, for the land office of the dis- 
trict, where they may obtain a title for as many acres 
as they have half dollars, being one fourth of the purchase 
price. The family are seen before, behind, or within the 
vehicle, according to the road, the weather, or perhaps 
the spirit of the party. Sometimes a horse and a pack 
saddle afford the means of transfer. "^ 

A traveller would pass in one journey four to five 
thousand hogs being driven to the Eastern market. 
In Benjamin Parker's reminiscences, we gain a vivid 
impression of the vast commerce and travel, which 
passed toward the West; and also have a quaint 
picture of the little Indiana boy, who was afterwards 
to be noted as one of her writers, as he sat by the 
roadside of the great national way, and observed the 
travel from that mysterious East toward the setting 
sun. He wrote: 

" From morning till night there was a continual rumble 
of wheels, and, when the rush was greatest, there was 

> Birkbeck, i\Iorris, A'otes on a Journey from Virginia, pages 25, 26. 



2i8 Historic Indiana 

never a minute that wagons were not in sight. Many 
families occupied two or more of the big red wagons then 
in use, with household goods and their implements, while 
extra horses, colts, cattle, sheep, and sometimes hogs 
were led or driven behind. Thus, when five or ten families 
were moving in company, the procession of wagons, men, 
women, and children and stock was quite lengthy and 
imposing. Now and then there would be an old-fashioned 
carriage, set upon high wheels to go safely over stumps 
and through streams. The older women and little children 
occupied these, and went bobbing up and down on the 
great leather springs, which were the fashion sixty years 
ago. But everybody did not travel in that way. Single 
families, occupying a single one or two horse wagon or 
cart, frequently passed along, seeming as confident and 
hopeful as the others. With the tinkling of bells, the 
rumbling of wheels, and the chatter of the people as the}^ 
went forever forward, the little boy who had gone to the 
road from his lonesome home in the woods was captivated, 
and carried away into the great active world. But the 
greatest wonder and delight of all was the stage-coach, 
radiant in new paint, and drawn by its four matched 
horses in their showy harness, and filled inside and on 
top with well-dressed people. We could hear the driver 
playing his bugle as he approached the little town, and it 
all seemed too fine and grand to be other than a dream." ^ 

In the early thirties, a new mode of reaching the 
centres of trade was advocated. Steam, applied to 
the running of boats, had worked wonders for those 
sections lying adjacent to the navigable streams. 
Alas! the fertile districts along shallow streams, and 
those remote from the waterways, including the in- 
land capital of Indiana, were greatly retarded in their 

> Parker, Benjamin, " Pioneer Days," in vol. iv.,Ind.Alag. Hist., 
1908. 



The Trail 219 

development by lack of adequate transportation. 
Railroads had only appeared on the horizon, and the 
agitation for the building of canals began. To-day 
we should hardly regard a slow-going canal-boat, 
travelling at the rate of eight miles an hour, as a great 
socializing influence; but in that earlier time, when 
the canals were first opened up, a traveller wrote 
back home from Ohio, that it was well worth while 
to make a trip to Cincinnati or Toledo, just to enjoy 
the luxury of the passage. 

The development of the State under this new mode 
of transportation is a very definite and interesting 
phase of Indiana's history. As Mr. Dillon has said: 

" the State system of internal improvement, which was 
adopted by Indiana in 1836, was not a new measure, nor 
did the adoption of the system at that time grow out of 
a new and hasty expression of popular sentiment. For a 
period of more than ten years, the expediency of providing 
by law for the commencement of a State system of pub- 
lic works had been discussed before the people of the 
State by governors, legislators, and distinguished private 
citizens."^ 

They instanced the Erie Canal, which was begun by 
New York State in 181 7, and within a decade after 
its completion the tolls repaid the cost of construction. 
In 1823, two years before steam was applied to the 
locomotive, the subject of connecting the Maumee and 
Wabash rivers by a canal over the old Indian trail, 
thus opening up navigation to the Lakes, had at- 
tracted the attention of the legislative authorities of 
Illinois and Indiana. The agitation entered politics, 

» Dillion, J. B., Hist, of Ind., page 569. Indianapolis, 1859. 



220 Historic Indiana 

divided families, and sundered friendships. In 1816, 
the year that the State was admitted, there was an 
act passed by the legislature reserving five per cent, of 
the proceeds of sales of all public lands within its 
territory as a fund for the construction of roads and 
canals and three-fifths of this fund was to be expended 
by act of legislature. In 182 1, this famous "three 
per cent, fund " was first drawn upon. In 1826, the 
State obtained from the general government a grant 
of land two miles and a half wide on each side of the 
proposed canal and projected State road, making 
3200 acres per mile, and the whole grant was valued 
at a million and a quarter of dollars. The sale of the 
government lands was to aid in the construction of 
the proposed improvements. Great inland districts 
were to be connected with shipping privileges. The 
rivers had long been hampered by the obstructions in 
their channels, and canals were to be substituted, 
as a better means of transportation, with lateral 
canals and turnpikes, opening up other districts. 
These ambitious and far-reaching plans for internal 
improvements included the Wabash and Erie Canal, 
covering 45 9 1 miles, and extending from Lake Erie 
down the Wabash where it was to be connected with 
the Ohio River, which Mr. Benton, in his very in- 
teresting monograph on the canal, calls the Indiana 
Appian Way ; the Central Canal which was to connect 
the inland city, Indianapolis, with the Wabash and Erie, 
via Muncietown and the White River Valley, and 
another branch to place the capital in connection with 
Evansville; there was also to be built the White- 
water Canal, which was to be a cross-cut canal from 
the Ohio River and was completed to Brookville; 
the Erie and Michigan Canal, from Fort Wayne to 






O C 



Ti 



^^•^-v^. 



a 



/-^.^W^v. 



;r| ^ 



The Trail 221 

Lake Michigan, and the National road. The last 
was the turnpike continuing that road from the Ohio 
State line, and extending thence to Indianapolis, and 
from there west to Illinois, and by a State road toward 
the north to Lake Michigan. There were also to be 
constructed turnpikes from the capital to La Fayette, 
and to Jeffersonville. The Wabash River channel 
from Vincennes to the Ohio was to have the obstruc- 
tions removed. Before these grand schemes for trans- 
portation in Indiana were entirely outlined, steam 
had been applied to railroads in England, and such 
a road was added to the project and planned to run 
from Madison to Indianapolis. Other railroads were 
also suggested. Even a casual glance at this bare 
outline of roads and canals, mapped out by the 
State Commissioner, will reveal the deeply felt demand 
for means of reaching the markets. 

When we follow the itinerary of a load of merchan- 
dise from New York to Indiana, w^e can realize through 
what a tortuous journey it passed and what length of 
time it took to transport merchandise. From New York, 
goods by freight were taken by boat up the Hudson 
River, to Albany, then fifteen miles over the turnpike 
to Schenectady, up the Mohawk by man power, 
through the canal and eight locks, around the Falls, and 
on from Utica to Lake Oneida by a canal and creek, 
through that lake to Onondaga and Oswego River — 
into Lake Ontario ; thence to Lewiston, then overland 
along the Niagara, by boat on Lake Erie; thence by 
land to Fort Boeuf, again by water to Pittsburgh and 
down the Ohio and up the Wabash River. One hun- 
dred thousand bushels of salt, annually, passed this 
way from Central New York to Indiana. 

The passage of the bill authorizing the internal 



222 Historic Indiana 

improvements was vastly popular. The news was 
carried from village to village and celebrated with 
the ringing of bells, firing of cannon, and processions 
marching through the streets. The people rejoiced 
over the prospect of an outlet to the seaboard for 
the products of the country, of which they could raise 
so much more than they could use. Work was begun 
on the Wabash Canal in 1832, on the White-water 
in 1836, and on the Central Canal in 1837. It was 
undertaken in sections, and in different parts of the 
State at the same time, by different contractors. 
Immediately, labor was in demand, and immigrants 
from Ireland and Germany were brought into the 
State to work on the canals. These families remained 
as permanent residents, and many of them became 
prosperous. In time, they were thoroughly absorbed 
into the body politic, as loyal citizens. For the next 
four years, the work went on throughout the projected 
system of public improvements. Along the lines of 
the canals, Paddy, just over from Ireland, and Hans 
from Germany, were making the dirt fly ; and laborers, 
already resident, were employed on the turnpikes, 
or in building w^arehouses and wharves, for the opening 
of commerce. The only grumbling heard came from 
the counties through which none of the projected 
highways were to pass. There were citizens who, 
for economic reasons, had opposed the whole scheme 
of internal improvements being undertaken by the 
State; but the majority had won. As soon as the bill 
had passed, the wildest speculation in lands ensued; 
farmers added to their farms and investors flocked 
into the State. If all had been paid for, distress need 
not have followed, but many of the ventures were 
undertaken on credit, and ruin of fortunes came. 



The Trail 223 

People had visions of the revenues from the canals 
and roads paying all taxes, and the dawn of a new 
era was prophesied. While manual labor on the 
various public works was progressing in many sections, 
a cloud appeared on the commercial horizon, to dis- 
quiet careful citizens. Grave errors in financing the 
system of highways were made, which brought finan- 
cial disaster to the State, long before anything had 
approached completion. The total of the canals, 
turnpikes, and railroads surveyed and included in the 
estimates, under the Act of 1836, was about twelve 
hundred and eighty-nine miles; which, it was es- 
timated then, would incur an expenditure of $19,914,- 
244.00. A permanent Commission was created to 
represent the State, in organizing the department of 
construction, and negotiating for funding the debt 
to be assumed. To meet the amounts necessar3^ 
so large for a frontier commonw^ealth, required wisdom 
and exceedingly provident management. This, the 
momentous question certainly failed to receive. Many 
mistakes were made. One of the fundamental errors 
was the result of pressure from each section, that 
their improvements should be executed at once; and 
the Board tried to satisfy public clamor, by endeavor- 
ing to construct all of the projects simultaneously. 
Then when the bonds were issued to raise the funds 
to build the canals and roads, they were sold on credit. 
As a consequence, there was, very soon, no money 
to meet the demands of contractors for supplies and 
construction. The wages of laborers went far in arrears 
and, of course, this immediately affected the small 
shopkeepers and general trade. Construction would 
be suspended for months, until funds might be forth- 
coming, causing great unrest and distress. To add 



224 Historic Indiana 

to the misfortunes of the people, the great panic of 
1837 swept over the nation, and financial disaster 
was general to the whole country. 

An additional short-sighted financial measure at 
the very beginning was, that even the money to pay 
the very interest on the debt was borrowed; which 
compounded the indebtedness to the further embar- 
rassment of the Treasury. In 1839, ^ large portion 
of the contemplated improvements were abandoned. 
The construction of the railroads was left to private 
enterprise. The Wabash Canal, which had been 
started before the General Improvements Bill had 
passed, was now in use over part of the route and 
yielding a revenue. This was not abandoned, as it 
had the land grants from the general government still 
unsold, from which it could yet realize funds. In 1842, 
w^hen of the twelve hundred miles of improvements 
contemplated, 281 miles had been completed, the State 
found itself in debt, for all causes, $207,894,613. Thus, 
Indiana, like several other States at that period, faced 
bankruptcy. It was often heard said, Indiana cannot 
pay the interest on her public debt. Her resources 
were very much crippled on account of her remoteness 
from markets, which limited production. As in some 
other States, it was openly claimed that the indebted- 
ness would have to go by default, but this was abhorrent 
to honest citizens and was very widely opposed. 
Sensational speeches were made in the State Assembly 
about "preserving the honor of the State, sir," one 
member asserting that he would chop wood to pay 
his proportion of the State debt before he would listen 
to repudiation. Mr. Butler and others representing 
the foreign bondholders spent season after season 
in the State, trying to avoid total loss, and have the 



The Trail 225 

work go on until revenues might be realized. Finally 
most of the works were permanently abandoned, 
and the Wabash and Erie Canal, with its lands and 
tolls, was taken in part payment of the claims, the 
bondholders promising to complete the canal. This 
they did by 185 1. This waterway extended from 
Evansville, on the Ohio, to Toledo, 379 miles of it 
lying within the State of Indiana. After the intro- 
duction of railroads had made the canal unprofit- 
able, the legality of the compromise was questioned, 
and the bondholders wanted the State to pay half 
of the debt for which the canal had been taken, as 
they claimed they had been defrauded of tolls, on 
account of the franchise granted to the railroads. 
They never realized more than 9!% of their principal, 
making the investment disastrous individually. The 
whole project had been so to the State exchequer; 
but the canal was a wonderful impetus to the develop- 
ment of the West. 

It has always been conceded that the economic and 
social- influence of the public works was far reaching. 
Every mile of improved transportation by turnpike 
facilitated the mail service and overland immigration, 
and made it possible for the inland settlers to reach 
the waterways with their produce. The canal in- 
creased the production of the country in a wonderful 
way. Before its completion, trade was stagnant. 
There was little incentive for industry among the 
people, for there was no market for more produce 
than could be consumed within their own territory, 
and lands lay idle. At one time, when Mr. Henry 
T. Sample was going overland, collecting pelts for a 
cargo, his business led him across the fertile Wea 
plains, fit to be called the Garden of the Gods. He 



226 Historic Indiana 

soliloquized thus to himself and his gray pony: " This 
stretch of country is beautiful beyond compare, but 
I would not give this bale of pelts for the whole of it, 
as I could not sell what it would produce." He lived 
to see the plains then stretched before him, worth 
millions of dollars. 

Before the canal was built, wheat sold for 37 to 45 
cents a bushel and com from 10 to 20 cents a bushel, 
while at the same time for their imports they paid 
$10.00 a barrel for salt, and sugar brought from 25 
to 35 cents per pound. A Putnam County settler 
says that prior to the completion of the canal he hauled 
a load of wheat (25 bushels) to Hamilton County, 
Ohio, a distance of 150 miles, for which he received 
38 cents a bushel. 

In less than two years after the canal reached a 
district, wheat advanced to 90 cents a bushel and 
salt could be bought for less than $4.00 a barrel. Mr. 
Benton says that 

"before the opening of the canal in 1844, the zone of the 
Maumee and upper Wabash valleys had sent towards 
Toledo only 5622 bushels of corn, five years later the 
exports from the same region, sent to that port, reached 
2,755,149 bushels. 

" For home consumption, the large number of laborers 
added to the population increased the demand for pro- 
duce, and much more money than ever before came into 
circulation. 

" When the canal was begun, the upper Wabash Valley 
was a wilderness. There were only 12,000 scattered pop- 
ulation in all that district, but people began to flock in 
by wagon-loads so that the number had increased to 
two hundred and seventy thousand by 1840, In 1846, 
over thirty families every day settled in the State. Five 



The Trail 227 

new counties were organized in three years following the 
opening of the first section of the canal from Fort Wayne 
to Huntington. Thirty per cent, of the emigrants entering 
the port of New York passed into the group of States 
where the Erie Canal and its connections were being con- 
structed. The boats that took grain up the canal brought 
back emigrants and homesteaders from the East. Thirty- 
eight counties in Indiana and nine in southeastern Illinois 
were directly affected by the new waterway. Long wagon 
trains of produce wended their way to the towns on the 
shores of the canal. In the year 1844, four hundred wagons 
in a day were waiting to unload at points like La Fayette 
and Wabash." ^ 

Towns rose and grew as a result of the canal com- 
merce, and the larger ones, which grew into cities, 
owed their first impetus to the same cause, and the 
railroad which succeeded it made their existence 
secure. We are told that in 1836 alone the land 
sales in Indiana amounted to three million acres. In 
addition to the enormous impetus given to agricul- 
tural-exportation, the canal also supplied water-power 
for manufacturing. In one year nine flour mills were 
built along the new line, and eight saw-mills, and 
paper, woolen, and oil mills came into existence, doing 
a flourishing business. The population of the counties 
bordering along the canal increased 397% from 1840 
to 1850, while counties containing better lands, but 
more remote from the waterway, only increased 190% 
in the same decade. The incoming population was 
of the most desirable quality, the majority being from 
Eastern and Northern States, and it was this inter- 
state migration of American-bom people which caused 

1 Benton, Elbert Jay, The Wabash Trade Route in the Development 
of the Old Northwest, Indiana Hist. Soc. Publications. 



228 Historic Indiana 

an entire political change in the State. The element 
which came in from the North helped to counter- 
balance the early settlement of Southern pro-slavery 
people along the Ohio and lower Wabash rivers. 
The canal, also, largely reversed the tide of trade 
from New Orleans to New York, and changed the 
centre of population. In 1830, five-sixths of the 
people within the State lived in the southern tier of 
counties bordering on the navigable streams. Ten 
years later, says Mr. Benton, 

"the line had pushed up and by 1850 there was an equal 
distribution, about as many living in the canal zone as 
the river counties. In i860, the population on the Wabash 
was from forty-nine to ninety to the square mile, while 
along the Ohio River it varied from eighteen to forty- 
five persons to the square mile."^ 

The Virginia, Carolina, and Kentucky settlements 
formerly had outnumbered the combined totals of New 
England and Middle State emigration. The finest 
flower of the Western States was from the intermar- 
riage of these families from the East joined with the 
•South. Of the valuable acquisition of foreign laborers, 
it should be remembered that the Germans who came 
in were tired of monarchical traditions, and, attracted 
by the name and the opposition to slavery, they very 
largely attached themselves to the Republican party. 
Owing to the Know-Nothing agitation, just at this 
time the Irish became to a great extent affiliated 
with the Democrats, all of which helped to maintain 
the balance of numbers between the two parties in 
Indiana, and made it, proverbially, a battle-ground 
in politics. 

1 Benton, E. J., The Wabash Trade Route, Publications of Ind. 
H!st. Soc. 



The Trail 229 

The period from 1841 to 1843 saw the opening of 
through traffic on the Wabash and Erie Canal from 
the Lake to La Fayette. Ten years later, after passing 
through deep financial hindrances, as we have seen, 
it was completed — the 459 miles to Evansville. The 
years from 1847 ^o 1856, says Mr. Benton, may be 
considered the heyday of the canal. Within that 
period the tolls and income reached the highest mark, 
amounting in 1852 to $193,400.18. The passenger 
"packets " ran regularly, proceeding in a most leisurely 
way, stopping at every wharf for produce and pas- 
sengers. The little towns on the way could be recon- 
noitred during the delay of taking on and putting 
off freight, and one could call upon a friend, or conclude 
a business transaction, before the next stage of the 
journey was begun! Weary with the monotony of 
the journey, travellers often strolled along the tow- 
path ahead of the boat, while it was going through 
the locks, and they would gather berries or wild flowers 
along the banks. If it chanced to be in the autumn, 
they sometimes went nutting in the near-by forests. 
Games at cards were a great relief to the tedium of 
the voyage, and often the play ran high, and bunco 
men followed the line, as they did on the river steamers. 
There was time for reading and reflection on such a 
journey. Lifelong friendships were formed during 
the leisurely passage, and children played about as if 
at home. In pleasant weather the passengers always 
sat about on the top deck of the boat, arrayed in 
holiday attire, now unknown in travelling, and gliding 
smoothly along past field and forest, they found it 
a delightful way of seeing the country. 

Sometimes we read tales of hot summer nights in 
stuffy staterooms and cabins, and marvellous stories 



230 Historic Indiana 

of swarms of mosquitoes, which were probably the 
cause of malarial fevers often contracted en route. 
One young girl has left a bitter complaint, in print, 
of her various experiences along the way, and added 
that all the mosquitoes ever hatched in the mud 
puddles of Indiana were condensed into one humming, 
ravenous swarm about their heads. 

Notwithstanding the beneficial effects on commerce, 
from the introduction of steamboat and canal trans- 
portation, as compared with old flatboats and wagon 
trains, their doom in turn was approaching. Steam 
had been applied to rail locomotion; even before 
Indiana's dearly bought system of internal improve- 
ment had been fairly inaugurated, the very masses 
of immigrants brought in by the waterways made 
more rapid transit of merchandise imperative. Says 
Mr. Benton: 

" While the canals were immensely stimulating the 
business of the State and encouraging immigration, the 
very enlargement of the volume of traffic, in turn, called 
for a more general system of transportation. As a direct 
result, there grew up a railroad system which ruined the 
canals." ^ 

In the thirties, the friends of internal improvement 
were sharply divided concerning the relative merits 
of canals and railroads. It was admitted that for 
novelty and speed, a railroad might be preferable to 
stage-coaches and canal boats, but it was contended 
that for a long journey, or for a man travelling with 
a family, a canal was better! It was pointed out that 
on a canal boat passengers could eat their meals, 
could walk about, write a letter, or play a game of 

» Benton, E. J., Wabash Trade Route, Indiana Hist. Soc. Pub. 



The Trail 231 

poker, whereas in a railway carriage these things 
were impossible ! In a canal boat, too, the passengers 
were as safe as at home, whereas in a railway car 
nobody could tell what might happen! The incoming 
of the railways was necessarily gradual and river 
traffic died as gradually. For example, it took eight 
years to complete the first railway in the State, and 
it stretched only from the Ohio River to the capital 
of the State. Vast sums had been expended in the 
canal ventures, and the bondholders tried to maintain 
the business. Steadily, the whole system refused to 
become profitable, and repairs were too expensive to 
be undertaken in the face of the new steam power. 
After dragging along for years in a dying condition, 
the Whitewater Canal was sold, for railroad right of 
way, in 1862 and 1865. The last section of the Wabash 
Canal was abandoned in 1874. Only the towns that 
chanced to lie along the route that was touched by 
the railroads survived. The immense old warehouses 
were abandoned to humbler uses, and to this day 
may be seen, where there is no longer any sign of 
the old canal save a depression in the surface of the 
land, grown up with reeds and rushes. Shadowy 
advertisements of the imports of teas, coffees, and 
spices may be deciphered, we are told, on the beams 
and walls; but the channel, which carried that mer- 
chandise, has gone like a tale that is told. Only a 
right of way for some other mode of transportation 
can be resurrected from its past. 

The old National road, already referred to, proved 
to be an open sesame to the West, a great impetus 
to immigration and commerce. For years it was the 
highway from the Southeast. 

During the years that the Internal Improvement 



232 Historic Indiana 

Act was being carried out by the building of turnpikes 
and canals to give other outlets to market, the traffic 
southward by steamboats on the rivers had continued 
to prosper. There were always passengers travelling 
on the steamers, as well as the freight they carried, 
all of which was often interrupted by obstructions 
in the rivers. The streams continued difficult of 
navigation, and the building of railroads was urged 
to further commerce. The same innovation which 
caused the canals to be unprofitable and finally 
abandoned, also made the river traffic languish and 
die. 

When the national tragedy of the Civil War was 
ended, the steamboat owners awoke to the fact that 
their calling was gone forever. That enemy of the 
river boats, the railroad, whose growth even the war 
could not check, had rapidly stretched its fingers out 
over the land. By consulting a map of forty-five 
years ago, it will be seen that the railroads of that 
time closely followed the banks of the rivers. They 
reached out, like the strands of a craftily laid net, to 
ensnare the business of the steamboats. In the face 
of such odds, defeat was inevitable. The river boats 
had to go, but the fight was an obstinate one. Says 
an old record: 

" For ten long years the struggle between the railroads 
and steamboats went on; fierce and bitter for the first 
five, and, for the steamboats, vindictive and heroic to 
the last. Millions of dollars were invested in the great 
white vessels that glided up and down the Mississippi 
and its tributaries, but they dropped out of the race one 
by one, to be tied up to the bank and become the sport 
of time. Some far-seeing owners, knowing the fight lost 
for all time, dismantled their vessels and sold the fittings 



The Trail 233 

and machinery. Others, more obstinate or hopeful, kept 
their boats trim and clean, ready against the day when 
public sentiment and the flow of business should again 
come their way. Every spring they painted them, every 
day they polished the brasswork. Through the long idle 
summers, they would sit in the pilot-houses watching the 
railroad engines write, in letters of smoke, against the sky, 
the story of their doom. The hungry race for cargoes 
was responsible for more than one river tragedy, during 
the period of waning trade. Where, six years before, 
captains had haughtily steamed past landings, regardless 
of the frantic signals of planters whose cotton, wheat, 
or hemp was piled on the shore, they now found them- 
selves driven to the humiliating expedient of arguing with 
shippers in favor of their boats, as against the railroads. 
Captains scented cargoes from afar. The wind seemed 
to carry news of a waiting shipment, and idle boats raced 
to the scene, like a school of sharks. The first to arrive 
nearly always secured the cargo." 

In an address on the future prospects of the inland 
capital of Indiana, a pioneer orator dilated on its 
improved prospects owing to the new invention of 
the propelling power of steam on land which was to 
revolutionize the channels of commerce. About the 
same time, when Judge Test was running for Congress, 
he sought to attract popular approval by referring 
to the new steam roads: "I tell you, fellow-citizens, 
that in England they are now running the cars thirty 
miles an hour, and they will yet be run at a higher 
speed in America." ^ This was enough, said his 
competitor for the office, the crowd set up a loud laugh 
at the expense of the Judge. An old fellow standing 
by bawled out: "You are crazy, or do you think 

' Test, Judge, Campaign Address. 



234 Historic Indiana 

we are all fools? a man could not live a moment at 
that speed." The Judge was lost. His successful 
opponent had reason to wish the trains were then 
running, as it took him seventeen days on horseback 
to reach Washington City. The people were so enthusi- 
astic in projecting railroads, that in 1832 the legis- 
lature granted six charters in one day, but building 
them was quite another affair. The one from Madison 
to Indianapolis was the first one to be built in Indiana. 
It was constructed part of the way by the State, at a 
very gradual pace; and the remainder of the distance 
by private persons, enjoying a subsidy of land from 
the State. In 1839, this road had been completed 
twenty miles, to Vernon, and so deliberate was the 
extension that it did not reach Indianapolis until 1847 ! 
With the exception of the Madison road all of the 
first railways in Indiana, as in other States, were laid 
with "strap iron" on wooden rails. When other 
roads were being constructed, the Madison Railroad 
officials complained that their monopoly was being 
ruined by the competition of the other roads, since 
the State had passed a law granting charters to them ! 
At first the railroads of Indiana were not parts of 
great through systems of transcontinental roads; but 
rather they radiated from the capital like the spokes 
of a wheel, connecting that city with river and lake 
ports. These roads traversed counties possessing 
wonderfully rich soil, and their agricultural products 
and live stock traffic enriched the companies that 
built them. The capitalists of each town imagined 
that they saw fortunes in railroad-building, and by 
1853 there had been over fifteen opened to traffic. 
The mileage increased constantly. After the Civil 
War, on account of Indiana's geographical position, 



The Trail 235 

which made it necessary for the roads running east 
and west, north of the Ohio River, to pass across the 
State, her roads were made part of the great trunk 
systems. In a few years the surface of the common- 
wealth was a network of railroads. In 1907, there 
were 6976 miles of railways within the State. The 
development of Indiana attributable to steam roads 
is so in common with that of the whole country that 
it needs no special mention. The first telegraph line 
in the State was put up in 1848. 

About the time that railroads were first penetrating 
the West, there arose a great craze for the building 
of "plank roads." This was in response to the urgent 
demand for better wagon roads whereon to reach 
the markets. Timber was plentiful and cheap, and 
this material seemed to offer a solution of the good 
roads question. By the year 1850, four hundred 
miles of planked roads, at a cost of twelve to fifteen 
hundred dollars a mile, had been completed in the 
State. But by that time the first roads constructed 
had begun to show the weak points of the method 
of paving. When new, these roads carried the traveller 
along swimmingly; but when the planks began to 
wear thin, and the sills to rot out, and the grading 
or foundation to sink away, they became justly called 
"corduroy" roads, and were certainly a weariness to 
the flesh. In some low places, the construction sank 
entirely out of sight. Many miles of the roads became 
so execrable that the farmers drove alongside in the 
mud rather than "jostle their bones" over the logs 
and ruts of the artificial road. 

By the time the people were recovering from the 
great losses of money from this form of highway, 
and their discouragement about better roads, it was 



236 Historic Indiana 

discovered that Nature had endowed the State in 
many districts with vast gravel beds, unsurpassed 
for the construction of turnpikes. Companies were 
chartered to build and operate toll roads. These 
proved very profitable, and were also a blessing to 
the farmers who used them for heavy traffic. They 
served their day, and passed into the free gravel 
roads now owned by the counties. 

Mr. Riley represents his old pioneers as talking 
reminiscently ^ 

" Of the times when we first settled here, and travel was 

so bad, 
When we had to go on horseback, and sometimes on 

'shanks mare,' 
And ' blaze ' a road fer them behind that had to travel 

there. 

" And now we go a-trotten' 'long a level gravel pike, 
In a big two-hoss road-wagon, jest as easy as you like : 
Two of us on the front seat, and our wimmen-folks behind, 
A-settin' in theyr Winsor cheers in perfect peace of mind! " 

The little toll-house at the side of the road with 
the superannuated couple on the front stoop has gone. 
The "pole and sweep" for closing the highway has 
disappeared. Better roads are still needed in most 
parts of the State, to bring it up to the high plane 
demanded for the truest economy and broadest civ- 
ilization, but those advantages are surely, if slowly, 
becoming general in more neighborhoods. At the 
close of the year 1905, there were in Indiana 16,268 
miles of gravel roads. 

A new means of transportation has dawned on the 

1 Riley, James Whitcomb, Neighborly Poems, page 23. Indian- 
apolis, 189 1. 



The Trail 237 

State, and is becoming a great social factor through- 
out Indiana. The interurban trolley roads are ex- 
tending in all directions with astonishing rapidity. 
One corporation alone is operating over six hundred 
miles of electric lines and there are already thirteen 
hundred miles of electric roads within the bounds of 
the State and two thousand miles more projected. 
More than fifty millions have been invested. Indian- 
apolis is the greatest electric railway centre in the 
world. Passengers are carried through the State for 
one half former railroad fares, and parcels at reason- 
able rates. What this pleasant and rapid transpor- 
tation means to the rural population can hardly be 
realized by the denizens of cities. From a position 
of great social isolation, the farmer's family, along 
these routes, may come into close touch with near-by 
towns and cities. 

Just now it seems hazardous to venture mention 
of the latest mode of locomotion in connection with 
the rural districts, but motor carriages have appeared 
upon- the scene and are taking their place in both 
town and country. Progressive farmers are buying 
automobiles, many using them for power as well as 
for pleasure on the road. Motor wagons will still 
further eliminate distance between country and town. 

With the national awakening to the vast oppor- 
tunity for improving transportation facilities by 
utilizing the natural arteries of commerce to create 
deep waterways through the heart of the continent, 
Indiana must share in the benefits, not only because 
of her nearness to other great streams, but because 
of her geographical position, and by the develop- 
ment of her own tributaries to the Mississippi. When 
these new plans for inland navigation are developed 



238 Historic Indiana 

to their consistent goal, the old "AppianWay" will 
again be dotted with the commerce of the East, on 
its journey from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. Through 
the Wabash route, the produce of a great interior will 
join the Mississippi deep waterway. Through the 
Ohio with its improved channel, which flows along the 
entire southern border of the State, the traffic of that 
district will be accommodated. The Calumet, deepened, 
will furnish an outlet for the regions about Chicago; 
while by a canal across the northern part of Indiana, 
from Lake Erie, by way of the Maumee, to Lake Mich- 
igan, the shipping between New York and Chicago 
may avoid the detour of five hundred miles of stormy 
lake travel, around the peninsula. Canals were once 
bankrupted by the incoming of railroads, and became 
obsolete; but with the enormous increase in the pop- 
ulation and foreign commerce, the traffic of the coun- 
try has outgrown the railroads; and, with the aid of 
electricity for rapid propelling power, canals must 
come into their own again. The shades of the early 
pioneers who worked so hard for improved transpor- 
tation may hover over the fleets on their way across 
the State, and contemplate Indiana as a sea-going 
community ! 

We have travelled the centuries from pirogue to 
automobile and electric trolley; we have seen the 
first white man paddle his canoe to the trading-post; 
have jogged with the pioneer over muddy roads, and 
immigrated with the early settlers in the prairie 
schooner, or with them have poled their flatboats up 
the rivers. We have welcomed, with them, the little 
steamers and packets on the waterways; have seen 
steam applied to land locomotives, relegating all 
other modes of transportation to desuetude; and in 



The Trail 239 

turn have seen this, with all other methods, being 
surpassed by electricity. Before us has passed the 
panorama of the evolution of transportation, epito- 
mizing the progress of civilization in Indiana. 

As the quaint vehicles of the past roll slowly down 
the highways toward oblivion, we wave good-bye. 
With a sigh for the wearisome journeys they entailed, 
we look forward with wonder and interest to what 
the future has in store, in the development of the 
means of transportation. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS AT NEW HARMONY 

THOSE who are interested in the social problems 
of the day may wish to review the record of 
the experiments at New Harmony. They are 
an example of the failures in the establishment of 
socialistic communities, in a State where individualism 
is the pronounced belief of the whole people. Whether 
collectivism, in any form, will be congenial to the 
American spirit, it is too soon, perhaps, to declare. 
In that earlier day, however, the hardy frontiersmen 
looked upon the experiments of Owen and Rapp as 
a theory of social life which was in direct opposition 
to the independent freedom which they had come 
into the wilderness, at a great sacrifice, to secure. 
Individual initiative was the key to the character of 
the Westerner. He made it his creed. He was aroused 
to suspicion and antagonism by any encroachments 
of dictation regarding the forms of his religious belief, 
the family life, or contract for his labor. Hence the 
neighbors of the autocrat of Harmonic, and afterward 
the social reformer, David Owen, were lacking in 
sympathy and appreciation of the colossal efforts of 
the two great innovators. A few of the settlers sent 
their young people to the incomparable schools es- 
tablished by Owen. More of them bought articles 

240 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 241 

that were manufactured by the Rappite community. 
Sympathy with the theories of the communists, they 
had none. A few visionaries, in different parts of the 
southern section of the State, and in other States, 
followed afar off, and made experiments of their own, 
lasting a few months, in community life. But the 
settlers, in general, combated the ideas promulgated 
at New Harmony. 

This little village in southern Indiana will interest 
us by its unique history, two socialistic communes 
having succeeded each other on this attractive spot 
in the lower Wabash Valley. These communities, 
established in the early part of the nineteenth century, 
live only in history; but they brought to Indiana one 
of the most interesting phases of co-operative life 
known to the nation. Many volumes have been 
written on the history of the communities, the theo- 
ries that they represented, and the lives of their 
founders and co-workers, but a brief account of their 
existence is necessary in any story of Indiana. 

In the spring of 181 5, George Rapp led his German 
peasant followers from their settlement " in Pennsyl- 
vania to the wilderness of Territorial Indiana. They 
came down the Ohio River and fifty miles up the 
Wabash in flatboats laden with the community 
goods, implements of labor and manufacture, and 
landed at the beautiful location previously chosen by 
Frederick Rapp. In imagination we see the eight 
hundred men, women, and children, clad in the quaint 
costume of their native Wiirtemberg, kneeling on the 
bank of the forest stream, and joining with Father 
Rapp in dedicating "Harmonic" to the purposes 
of a primitive, Christian brotherhood. These people 
belonged to the stolid German peasant class, and 



242 Historic Indiana 

joined their fortunes with George Rapp, to emigrate 
to a free country, and worship God according to their 
own pecuHar beliefs, which were the teachings of 
Father Rapp. He was a strong-willed man, a very- 
arbitrary over-lord, and the simple band implicitly 
followed where he guided them. The newly acquired 
estate comprised about thirty thousand acres, of the 
most fertile lands that bordered on the beautiful 
river. The tract was covered with the magnificent 
primeval forest usual in Indiana. The hillsides were 
suited to the planting of vineyards; and the river, 
as was foreseen, furnished a highway to the markets, 
and water-power for their various mills. A dozen 
years before this time, their autocratic leader had led 
his follow^ers forth from the fatherland to the wilds 
of Pennsylvania, and had planted a wonderfully 
successful community there. They had labored with 
such industry and plodding faithfulness, under the 
wise management of George Rapp and his adopted 
son Frederick, that their common property was con- 
sidered sacrificed, when it was sold for one hundred 
thousand dollars, upon their departure for Indiana. 
The Territory of Indiana at that time had but few 
settlers, and these were located through the southern 
tier of counties, on scattered clearings, and in tiny 
villages. There, the zealous Rappite community soon 
found that the opening up of the fertile acres exposed 
them to the prevailing malaria, which had proven so 
deadly to all the pioneers. The mortality among 
their membership, the first four or five years, ap- 
palled them, and, it is said, determined their resolution 
to sell the great plantation as soon as it could be made 
attractive to a purchaser. Gradually, however, as 
the lands were cultivated, the unhealthfulness dis- 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 243 

appeared; until, in the latest years of their sojourn^ 
there were only two or three deaths a year. These 
thrifty people planted orchards, and vineyards, and 
broad acres of grain. Their gardens were models, 
and their flocks and herds multiplied in the meadows. 
After they had provided themselves with temporary 
cabins, they built a village of homes and commu- 
nity houses, a fort, a granary, saw-mill, woollen mill, 
brickyard, distillery, brewery, and a silk factory. 
Eventually, they built shops in the town for all the 
trades. 

The homely buildings they erected are still in use, 
testifying to the integrity of their workmanship, if 
not to their artistic sense of design. One of the large 
community houses is now used as a tavern, another 
as a theatre, and one as a general store; and on the 
outer wall the same old sun-dial marks the hours for 
the twentieth century inhabitants, that served to 
assemble the plodding peasants for their march to 
the fields. The church in which all worshipped was 
built on the plan which Father Rapp claimed had 
come to him in a revelation. It was in the form of 
a Greek cross and was nearly one hundred and twenty 
feet in length. The roof was supported by twenty- 
eight pillars of walnut, cherry, and sassafras wood. 
The walnut logs measured six feet in circumference. 
The exterior of the church was not attractive archi- 
tecturally, but an English traveller wrote that one 
could scarcely imagine himself in the wilds of Indiana, 
on the borders of the Wabash, while walking through 
the long resounding aisles and surveying the stately 
colonnades of this cathedral-like church. 

During all their sojourn in the State, this pecu- 
liar people saw nothing of the outside world and its 



244 Historic Indiana 

attractions. The adopted son, Frederick Rapp, was 
the business representative for the community. He it 
was that introduced any saving leaven of variety into 
their Hves. Flower-gardens and a band of music were 
allowed them to relieve the dead monotony of the 
prescribed round of their existence. The people, both 
men and women, toiled in the shops and fields for the 
common treasury. Each day they rose before six 
o'clock, and after breakfasting went forth in a procession 
to the daily tasks. Marriage vs^as not allowed, and the 
only increase in their numbers were the accessions 
from Germany. The squatters on the lands near the 
community were too fond of their free and independent 
life to be attracted to such an autocracy. The homely 
dress worn was all of their own manufacture; both 
men and women wore home-made straw hats, short 
jackets of coarse material, and a skirt or trousers of 
the same goods. There were flowers in the doorways, 
and there was a pleasant regulation which provided 
an excellent band of music that played in the public 
garden at sunset, and on the hillsides, when the 
peasants were laboring in the fields. The people were 
industrious, kind, strictly temperate — not even the 
use of tobacco being allowed. Their honest and 
upright dealing assured their communal success, 
everything that they sold being of excellent quality 
and strictly as they represented it to be. The trade 
of the community extended from Pittsburg to New 
Orleans, and they had branch stores at Vincennes 
and across the Illinois line. 

In any estimate of the achievements of this experi- 
ment in community life, it must be remembered 
that the membership was united by a strong religious 
bond, that they were all producers, were all peasants 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 245 

who had been accustomed to being suppressed, and 
that they were ignorant of the language of America. 
They were from a dull and stolid social stratum, and 
had enjoyed little religious or political liberty in 
Germany, very meagre material comforts, and few 
pleasures, so that the lack of freedom of initiative in 
their restricted existence at Harmonic seemed, to 
most of them, offset by the creature comforts sup- 
plied to all of the commune. 

The good business management of the leaders and 
the patient, plodding industry of the united member- 
ship, celibacy which restricted the increase of un- 
productive members, and their belief in the near 
approach of the judgment day which made them 
careless of owning private property, contributed 
toward the increase of community wealth. It was 
said that when the Harmonists left Indiana their 
funds amounted to a million dollars, which in that 
primitive time was a vast sum. "In May, 1824, we 
have departed," was scrawled under the stairw^ay in 
one of the community houses. Back to Pennsylvania, 
this time on the borders of the Ohio River, eighteen 
miles below Pittsburg, George Rapp led his stolid 
followers to a new place which they named Economy. 
Was it to prevent any measure of rest being their 
portion, a fear that luxurious living might entice his 
flock from strict obedience ? Or was it to be nearer the 
Eastern markets? No statement is left to tell why 
the autocrat sold Old Harmonic, and began the labori- 
ous task of creating a new settlement. Mrs. Blake, 
in her story of the commune, called Heart's Haven, 
gives a vivid impression of the life in that circum- 
scribed community, with all of its suppressed emotions 
of mother love, and natural longing for separate homes, 



246 Historic Indiana 

and a return to their marriage vows, and recognition 
of the family Hfe. 

When Richard Flower, a neighboring communist on 
the Illinois side of the Wabash, was going back to 
England, George Rapp commissioned him to sell the 
Harmonic estate, if possible, and Flower received 
$5000 for accomplishing the transfer. He made the 
sale to Robert Owen, a famous Scotch philanthropist, 
who had been conducting a successful commune in 
the manufacturing town of New Lanark. Mr. Owen 
took over the whole of the great property with its 
substantial improvements, paying about $150,000 for 
it. It is said that double the sum received would 
have been a modest estimate of the value of the princely 
estate and well-built town. When the faithful Rappists 
had settled in their new location in Pennsylvania, 
the same industry and capable leadership continued 
their material prosperity. George Rapp died in 1847. 
He was succeeded in command by Elders elected by 
the community. "These men were able and honorable, 
we are glad to know ; for the sake of the quiet creatures 
drowsing away their remnant of life, fat and contented, 
or driving their plows through the fields, or sitting on 
the stoops of the village houses when evening comes." ^ 
In 1874, years after their exodus, the Rappists sent 
back to their old community in Indiana and repur- 
chased the church edifice. They used part of the stone 
and brick for a wall about their ancient burying- 
ground ; giving the lot and the wing of the building 
for the Working Men's Institute Library, in memory 
of the Harmonic Society founded by George Rapp 
in 1815. 

The prosperity of the commune, in their new location, 

' Lockwood, Geo. B., The New Harmony Movement, page 34. 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 247 

was so great that in the seventies the wealth of the 
Rappists was estimated to be any sum from ten to 
thirty millions of dollars. These values dwindled with 
the passing of the membership by death and from the 
poor management of later leaders. The community 
ceased to exist, and became a corporation of individual 
holdings. From a material point of view it was one 
of the few successful communes, but Robert Owen 
saw wherein it was a failure. It contravened an 
important law of nature when it forbade family ties. 
The animal nature had been sufficiently cared for, 
they looked well fed and decently clothed and free 
from business anxieties, but Rapp's disciples had 
bought this immunity from bread-and-butter cares 
dearly — even at the expense of the heart and head. 
By the greatest imaginable contrast, the leaders of 
the new community, which entered into the possession 
of New Harmony, as they re-christened it, were as- 
sembled for the pursuit of the things of the spirit 
along intellectual paths — for culture for its own sake, 
for research in science, and particularly for educational 
advancement. 

Robert Owen was a dreamer. He was of those 
who have visions of a better future for mankind. To 
obtain the right environment for instituting a new 
social system, on the community plan, he bought 
the magnificent estate of New Harmony, Of this 
selection he said : 

" No site for a number of communities, in close union 
together, can be found finer than that which surrounds 
us. Its natural situation and the variety of its natural 
productions exceed anything I have seen in Europe or 
America; the rich land, intermixed with rivers, islands, 
woods, and hills in beautiful proportions to each other, 



248 Historic Indiana 

presents a prospect which highly gratifies every intelligent 
beholder."^ 

The village on the domain, which had been built by 
the Rappites, the new commune diverted to the 
various needs of the different classes of inhabitants. 
The factories were retained, the community houses 
were used for the members and for the new boarding- 
schools. The vast church was converted into an 
assembly hall, for the town meetings, weekly concerts 
and balls, and the various lectures that were given. 
The second-story rooms in the wings were used for 
reading, debating, and music rooms. The frame 
church was retained for religious meetings, and day 
and night schools. 

Of Robert Owen, the founder of New Harmony, 
his biographer, Lloyd Jones, tells us that the great 
reformer was born in Wales in 1771. After a few 
short years of schooling, which he appreciated so 
unusually, the lad, at the age of ten, went to London 
as a draper's apprentice. In the home of his employers 
he found a library, and read omnivorously during 
every leisure moment. After learning his trade, he 
worked at it until his eighteenth year, saving every 
cent possible; for in his whole life, it is said, he never 
indulged in an injurious or expensive habit. Starting 
in a manufacturing business with five hundred dollars 
capital, he went steadily onward, through various 
changes of partnerships, in the cotton spinning and 
allied trades, until he had accumulated a large fortune. 

During these years of marked success in business, 
Robert Owen had constantly devoted much of his 
time and thought to the amelioration of the wretched 

1 Lockwood, Geo. B., page 70. New York, 1905. 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 249 

condition of the laboring classes throughout the 
United Kingdom. After acquiring the factory town 
of New Lanark, which was typical in its drunkenness, 
squalor, and ignorance, he made that village renowned 
as a happy and orderly community of factory hands. 
At that time he met and was married to Miss Dale, 
whose name was coupled with that of Owen in naming 
each of their children. To New Lanark, it is said, 
came representatives of royalty, philanthropists, and 
educators from all parts of Europe, who journeyed 
thither to study the processes which Mr. Owen put 
in operation for the betterment of the working people 
in his mills, making them the most happy and orderly 
in all England. At the same time, in agitation and 
in national legislation, every social movement, every 
real advance in England on behalf of the workers, 
linked itself to the name of Robert Owen. He wrote 
voluminously, and labored unceasingly, for the re- 
form of factory laws, for the establishment of co- 
operative societies, and for better conditions of living 
for the wage-earners. Frederick Engles has left the 
statement that as long as Robert Owen was merely 
a philanthropist he was rewarded with applause, 
wealth, honor, and glory. He was the most popular 
man in Europe, not only with men of his own class, 
but with statesmen and princes, who listened to him 
approvingly. 

This was the man who entered into the project of 
establishing in Indiana a communistic colonization 
scheme which he had long advocated. His son has 
recorded that the offer of the Rappites to sell a village, 
already built on a vast tract of land capable of sup- 
porting tens of thousands of people, in a new and 
free country, was the determining cause of Mr. Owen's 



250 Historic Indiana 

closing the purchase of Harmonie. He and his sons 
gave up every comfort and luxury in England that 
he might have a vast theatre in which to try his plans 
of social reform. 

It was in 1825 that Mr, Owen came into possession 
of the thirty thousand acres of land, three thousand 
of which were under cultivation. Full of hope and 
noble enthusiasm, he inaugurated the plans for the 
"new moral world," which was to be an organ- 
ization of society to rationally educate and employ 
all classes, giving a new existence to man by surround- 
ing him with superior circumstances only. In contrast 
to the Rappite theory, education, pleasant environ- 
ment, culture, and freedom of thought were to take the 
place of ignorance, an absence of amusements, and of 
an arbitrary ecclesiastical autocracy, to hold the band 
of people together. 

Invitations to membership included all who were 
in sympathy with Robert Owen's belief in the need 
of a new form of society. In the course of his address 
in the halls of Congress at Washington, he said : 

" In the heart of the United States, and almost in the 
centre of its unequalled internal navigation, that Power 
which governs and directs the universe, and every action of 
man, has arranged circumstances which were far beyond 
my control, and permits me to commence a new empire 
of peace and good-will to men, founded on other principles 
than those of the present or the past. I have, however, 
no wish to lead the way. I am desirous that governments 
should become masters of the subject, adopt the prin- 
ciples, encourage the practice, and thereby retain the 
direction of the public mind for their own benefit, and 
the benefit of the people. But as I have not the control 
of circumstances in this public course, I must show what 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 251 

private exertions, guided by these new principles, can 
accomplish at New Harmony, and these new proceedings 
will begin in April." ^ 

During the year 1825, students of public questions 
in Europe and America were agog over the new pro- 
ject and visionaries of every description were attracted 
by the experiment. Mr. Owen was an extreme liberal 
in his religious views and many of those who drifted 
into the community were free-thinkers. Before he 
himself reached the scene there had swarmed into 
New Harmony so many eccentric and curious people, 
so many with hobbies to carry out and others who 
wished to attain a life where they would not have 
to labor, that Mr. Owen was deprived of a choice of 
inhabitants, upon whom to try the new social scheme. 
The first address of the great heart who founded the 
commune seems almost pathetic in the light of its 
brief history. His followers and the curious people 
from the country round about were assembled in the 
vast church, now rechristened the Hall of Harmony. 
"I am come to this country," he said, "to introduce 
an entire new system of society; to change it from an 
ignorant and selfish system to an enlightened social 
system which shall gradually unite all interests into 
one, and remove all causes for contest between indi- 
viduals." 2 The change must be gradual, he explained, 
and after a sincere, candid, and hopeful explanation 
of the details of his plans, he laid the proposed con- 
stitution for the preliminary society before them. It 
was adopted four days later, and in it his purposes in 
founding the community were comprehensively stated. 

> Lockwood, Geo. B., The New Harmony Movement, page 70. 
New York, 1905. 
^Ibid., page 75. 



I 



252 Historic Indiana 

This document may be found in the old library of the 
village, or more conveniently consulted in the pages 
of Mr, George Lockwood's most interesting work on 
The New Harmony Movement. The points can only 
be touched upon here. The constitution is prefaced by 
the declaration that the society is instituted generally 
to promote the happiness of the world. It then sets 
forth that persons of all ages and descriptions may 
become members. Persons of color may be received 
as helpers, or for future colonization by themselves. 
No rank was to be recognized, no artificial inequality 
acknowledged. Precedence was to be given only to 
age, experience, and those chosen to office. As Mr. 
Owen, the founder, had purchased the property, paid 
for it, and furnished the capital to consummate the 
plans, it was modestly claimed that he should have 
the appointment of a committee of integrity and 
experience, to direct and arrange the affairs of the 
society. His expectation was announced that a 
sufficient number of trained members would be 
gathered to form an association, at the end of two 
or three years, who could establish an independent 
community of equality and self-rule. The formation 
of other societies of like order, it was hoped, would 
follow. Those who wished to become members were 
to sign the constitution, were to occupy dwellings 
assigned to them, provide their own household fur- 
niture and utensils. The society w^as not to be answer- 
able for the debts of any of its members. They were 
to be temperate, regular and orderly in conduct, 
diligent in their employments, and were to apply 
themselves to acquire an occupation. They were to 
help protect the whole property from injury, and 
enter into the society with a determination to promote 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 253 

its peace, prosperity, harmony, and social equality. 
In return the members were to receive such advan- 
tages, living, comforts, and education for their children, 
as the present state of New Harmony afforded. In old 
age, in sickness, or when accident occurred, care was 
to be taken of all parties, medical aid afforded, and 
every attention shown to them that kindness could 
suggest. Each member should, within a fixed limit, 
have the free choice of food and clothing. Each 
family was to receive credits in proportion to the 
number of its useful members. Members were to 
have the privilege of receiving their friends to visit 
them, provided they be answerable for the conduct 
of such sojourners. The children were to be educated 
at the expense of the community. Parents that 
preferred placing their children in the boarding-school 
after they had attained two years of age could do 
so by special arrangement, week by week. Members 
were allowed complete liberty of conscience, and were 
afforded every facility for exercising those practices 
of religious worship which they preferred. They 
could quit the society on a week's notice, taking with 
them the productions of the establishment, to the 
value of what they brought. Families or members 
might be dismissed on the same terms, by the com- 
mittee. Equality of rights and duties, community 
of property, co-operative union in business and 
amusements, freedom of speech and activity, acqui- 
sition of knowledge, obedience to the laws of the 
State and nation, preservation of health, courtesy in 
all intercourse, kindness in all actions- — were declared 
to be the principles of New Harmony's foundation. 

Proceeding upon this foundation, Robert Owen, 
assisted in his plans by his talented sons, and his 



2 54 Historic Indiana 

enlightened co-worker William Maclure, went hope- 
fully forward toward the establishment of the com- 
mune upon a substantial basis. Free schools for the 
youth, and all who wished for them, was the first 
care of the founders. Well regulated amusements 
were held to be a large part of the community's in- 
terest, and every Friday evening there were concerts. 
Tuesday evening was designated as the night for the 
weekly balls, for which an excellent band of music 
was supplied. Wednesday evening the public meetings 
of the society were held, for the discussion of all 
subjects relating to the well-being of the commune. In 
time these meetings must have come to be veritable 
fields of contest, when what has been described as 
the heterogeneous collection of radicals, enthusiastic 
devotees to peculiar principles, honest latitudinarians, 
and lazy theorists had assembled, and each wanted 
to put in practice his personal views. Thursday was 
officially a day of rest for the commune; some made 
it a day of recreation, also. Permission to speak in the 
village church was given to any minister who asked it, 
his creed not being inquired into. The New Harmony 
Gazette was established as the official organ of the com- 
mune, with the beautiful motto, " If we cannot recon- 
cile all opinions let us endeavor to unite all hearts." 
By Christmas, eight months after the organization 
of the society, the Gazette announced that the pop- 
ulation of the community numbered one thousand 
persons. The next month, on January i8, 1826, 
Robert Owen returned from Europe and a tour of the 
Atlantic cities, accompanied by the famous "boat- 
load of knowledge." These were teachers, scientists, 
and eminent men who had been enlisted in the work 
of uplifting the world. 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 255 

Let us follow in a bare outline Mr. Lockwood's 
graphic summary of events and the characters that 
gave New Harmony its brilliant place in the dawn 
of the nineteenth century. ^ 

' ' Notable as New Harmony was in its own time as 
the scene of an ambitious effort at social regeneration, 
the perspective of years is necessary to an adequate 
portrayal of its importance in American history." 
There the doctrine of universal elementary education 
at public expense, without regard to sex or sect, as a 
duty of the State, was first proclaimed in the Middle 
West, and equal educational privileges for the sexes 
established. There the Pestalozzian system of teach- 
ing, now so generally followed everywhere, was first 
successfully instituted in the United States. William 
Maclure's manual-training and industrial and trade 
school, in connection with regular school instruction, 
was the first of its kind in America. Through the 
prominent scientists who pursued their researches 
at New Harmony, it became the greatest scientific 
centre on this continent. It possessed a museum 
which contained the remarkable collections of Thomas 
Say, Maclure, and Owen, and a scientific library 
unexcelled in the New World. In New Harmony 
women were first given a voice and vote in the local 
legislative councils; and there the doctrine of equal 
political rights for all, without regard to sex or color, 
was first proclaimed by Frances Wright. Through 
this brilliant woman, too. New Harmony became one 
of the earliest centres of the Abolition movement, 
and by her was founded there what is known as the 
first woman's literary club in the United States. The 

» Lockwood, Geo. B., The New Harmony Movement, page 3. New 
York, 1905. 



256 Historic Indiana 

community dramatic club, which endured from 1828 
to 1875, was one of the earliest clubs of that kind that 
were organized in the country, and trained many 
actors for the profession. The first prohibition of 
the liquor traffic, by administrative edict, was made 
in this community in 1826. By William Maclure's 
provision. New Harmony gave to the State and to 
Illinois a system of mechanics' libraries for more than 
a hundred and fifty communities in those States. 
Josiah Warren of New Harmony originated a philos- 
ophy of individualism, which was a rebound from 
their own communism, and has impressed itself in- 
delibly upon modem economic thought. And from 
the scheme of the "time store" and "labor notes," 
originated by that early philosopher and inventive 
genius, it is said "Robert Owen derived the central 
idea of the great labor co-operative societies of Great 
Britain, which constituted the most successful labor 
movement of the last century. A leaven of liberality 
in religious thought was also introduced into the 
commonwealth which helped to dispel the narrow 
type of religion then so general. 

Surely, if advanced thought and enlightenment could 
insure success, the great scheme should have at- 
tained it by the superior character of its leadership. 
By the October following the organization of the 
commune, the Gazette stated that every State in the 
Union with the exception of two and almost every 
country in the north of Europe had contributed to 
make up the population! What response was there 
to all of the endeavors for their welfare, by these 
adherents? What were the one thousand residents 
producing with all the grand equipment that had 
been provided, and how were they demeaning them- 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 257 

selves under the liberal rules passed for the control 
of the community? What activity had been shown 
in shop, factory, vineyard, and field? Alas! we read 
in their records that there were already those who 
felt that they performed more than their share of 
labor; that some of the great mills were idle for lack 
of workmen. Accessions of skilful hands in nearly 
all these branches of industry, as well as in some 
other departments, is still desirable, pleads the Gazette. 
Notwithstanding this poverty of laborers, and the 
surplus of idlers or incompetents, when Mr. Owen 
returned from England, with characteristic optimism, 
he proceeded to strike off two years from the three 
of the probation! He announced that he was so well 
pleased with the progress made that he would proceed 
to organize those of the society who wished it into 
a community of perfect equality! After a week of 
meetings for discussion and framing of the plans, a 
very comprehensive constitution and declaration of 
principles was framed, and adopted. This document 
is of too great length to reproduce here, but among 
other things, equal privileges and advantages, without 
regard to services, were assured to every member 
who should unite with the society. The son Robert 
Dale Owen afterwards wrote that it was liberty, 
equality, and fraternity in downright earnest, but 
that he made no opposition, for he had too much of 
his father's all-believing disposition to anticipate 
results which any shrewd, cool-headed business man 
might have predicted. How rapidly they came. One 
curious result of the adoption of the permanent con- 
stitution was the immediate defection of whole groups 
of persons, who formed societies of their own and were 
allowed to establish themselves on different parts of 



258 Historic Indiana 

the domain. There seemed to be quantities of persons 
in the colony who, it has been said, discovering them- 
selves out of place and at a discount in the world 
as it is, rashly concluded that they were exactly fitted 
for the world as it ought to be. No more convincing 
commentary on Robert Owen's freedom from com- 
mercially interested motives could be asked for 
than his pleasure at the increase of these detached 
communities. Not only to the offshoots that located 
on the estate, but to the other communities modelled 
on the New Harmony plan, he gave a gracious wel- 
come and rejoiced at the spread of the ideas. No less 
than twenty communes sprang into existence in the 
country, twelve of which were in Indiana, three in 
New York, three in Ohio, one in Pennsylvania, and 
one in Tennessee. In five years they had all passed 
into oblivion, but Owen had given them every en- 
couragement. He had a passion for the regeneration 
of society. His propaganda in the cities of both con- 
tinents, and before the most illustrious people in 
public life, showed that it was a sublime interest in 
humanity, and not personal aggrandizement, that 
prompted his investment, and subsequent endeavors. 

In establishing the educational departments of New 
Harmony, Robert Owen gave his co-worker William 
Maclure sole charge of that feature of the new reforms. 
Mr. Maclure had joined in the experiment, by investing 
a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and engaging 
to make the community the centre of his plans for 
educational work in America, according to the new 
Pestalozzian system of instruction. William Maclure 
was a Scotchman by birth, and had come to America 
to make a geological survey of the United States. 
On account of his invaluable services in this science, 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 259 

he is called the Father of American Geology. He 
was the principal founder of the Philadelphia Academy 
of Natural Sciences, and for twenty-three years its 
president. He was one of the first men to advocate 
industrial education, and had founded an agricultural 
school in Spain, on an estate of 10,000 acres, which 
he lost as the result of a political revolution. While 
visiting in Scotland, after he had retired from a suc- 
cessful mercantile career, William Maclure made the 
acquaintance of Robert Owen at New Lanark. He 
had gone there to study the model factory community, 
and especially the schools that Mr. Owen had es- 
tablished. The two men had many opinions and 
aspirations in common, and both were devoted to 
the cause of improving the conditions of existence 
for the lowly. It was natural that when Mr, Owen 
came to America, to establish the New Harmony 
commune, William Maclure should join him in the 
great enterprise. They brought out with them 
Thomas Say, the illustrious "Father of American 
Zoology," Dr. Gerard Troost, the geologist, and John 
Chapplesmith, the famous engraver. Those who were 
to be instructors in the great educational institu- 
tions planned were Professor Joseph Neef, Madam 
Frotageot, Phiquepal d'Arusmont, and their assistants. 
These teachers were trained in Pestalozzi's famous 
school in Switzerland. In taking so much care to estab- 
lish a broad educational system at New Harmony, 
including industrial features, the founders were ex- 
emplifying their creed, that the formation of char- 
acter was the chief end of all training, and that the 
school was the great means for social regeneration. 
The children were to be surrounded solely by cir- 
cumstances favorable to their development. William 



26o Historic Indiana 

Maclure showed by his hfe-work that he beHcved 
that free, equal, and universal schools were the only 
means of raising the masses to the estate of comfort 
and enlightenment; and he addressed himself to that 
phase alone of the community life at New Harmony. 
He firmly believed the sensible doctrine that every 
child of the productive classes should be taught a 
trade, in order that he might be self-supporting when 
through with school. 

The advanced section of the schools, numbering as 
many as eighty pupils, and called the school of adults, 
was also taught chemistry by the famous Dr. Troost, 
drawing by the French artist Lesseur, and natural 
history by Thomas Say — ^truly as brilliant a group of 
instructors as could have been found in any college, 
on either side of the water. In all of the departments, 
girls were received, and taught, on an equality with 
the boys, for the first time in the history of the country. 
Although the schools were established for the commune, 
they attracted pupils from every section of the country, 
from New Orleans to New York. It is pathetic to 
think that only three counties distant the lad Abra- 
ham Lincoln, hungering for knowledge, knew of these 
schools but had no possible means of availing himself 
of the great opportunity. Later Mr. Maclure attempted 
to maintain a seminary for young men and women, 
called an orphans' manual training school, and free 
of any expense to them; and still another was started 
called The School of Industry. We are told that 
when, one by one, his educational experiments, in each 
of which he placed such high hopes, came to naught, 
William Maclure, still eager to do something for the 
cause of education, and for the productive classes, 
directed his philanthropy toward the formation of 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 261 

an educational society for adults called The Society 
of Manual Instruction, which was really a mechanics' 
institute. This school, with all of the others, after 
failing health obliged Mr. Maclure to go to Mexico, 
went out of existence. Although the commune had 
failed and his earlier schools had passed into oblivion 
with it, Mr. Maclure in his closing hours provided 
for the widely known plan for the Working Men's 
Institute and Library. 

Mr. Maclure was forced to leave his new work 
and go to Mexico ; twelve years afterward he died on 
his way back to the village. In his will he had pro- 
vided for a system of libraries for the working-people 
of the country. Hear from Mr. Dunn's article the 
foreign-sounding list of investments, that were to be 
devoted to the Hoosier libraries : Besides his property 
in New Harmony he set aside over a million reals in 
Spanish securities, his house in Alicante, his convent 
of St. Gives and accompanying estate of ten thousand 
acres in Valencia ; his convent and estate at Grosmano ; 
his estate of Carman de Croix; the valley of Murada; 
forty-one thousand francs in French securities; notes, 
and mortgages on properties scattered from Big Lick 
plantation in Virginia to various parts of England, 
France, and Spain; his vast collections of minerals 
and prints, and near two thousand copper plates of 
engravings and illustrations. By the provisions . made 
in his will, and after legal vicissitudes and organization 
of many temporary societies, to fulfil the requirements 
before obtaining an interest in the bequest, one hun- 
dred and sixty libraries were created in as many 
different counties of Indiana and Illinois! 

" Unfortunately there was nothing in their formation to 
insure, and but little to encourage, perpetuity. The 



262 Historic Indiana 

preliminary library required, of one hundred volumes, 
as a nucleus, before the county could receive a donation 
of books, was often valueless; and after the little libraries 
were established it was a sad fact that there was neither 
a competent custodian nor suitable quarters; what with 
lack of supervision and rough usage, they melted away. 
And there was neither taxation nor endowment to replace 
them."^ 

The township libraries, organized by the State of 
Indiana in 1854, were often combined with what was 
left of the Maclure foundation. Memories of a dusty, 
musty attic, festooned with cobwebs and located 
over the dingy shop and office of the township trustee, 
caused a grateful sentiment in the heart of the writer 
toward that Maclure benefaction to Indiana, With 
her brother, in earliest childhood, the children, guided 
by a student father, found the forgotten heaps of 
books, and read with eager interest the classic juve- 
niles and standard works included in that old col- 
lection. Nibbled by mice, mutilated by careless 
hands, many of the volumes lost, and more of them 
unreturned by previous readers, the old library was 
but a tattered ghost of William Maclure's intention; 
but, with other collections established by that bequest, 
it had been a means of inspiration and culture to 
many men and women in the frontier communities, 
who thirsted for knowledge. It is a pleasant relief, 
from this account of dispersed libraries, to record the 
faithful preservation and extension of the Maclure 
Working Men's Library at New Harmony itself. That 
village, aided by the Rappite memorial and the sub- 
sequent munificent bequest of Dr. Murphy, one of 
its own citizens, has built a handsome building, in 

> Dunn, J. P., Report on Public Libraries. Supt.'s Report, 1904. 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 263 

which are housed the library, a museum, an art gallery, 
and the village auditorium. The value of the library's 
holdings, since the bequest of Dr. Murphy, is estimated 
at two hundred thousand dollars ; enabling the manage- 
ment to continually add books to the twenty thousand 
volumes now on the shelves. It has, also, the very 
important collection of the scientific works of its 
founders, and the records and publications regarding 
the unusual history of New Harmony and similar 
communes are carefully preserved. The library is of 
great interest to the student of history, or of sociology. 
The cheap lands of the New World have attracted 
many dreamers of the possibility of community life 
solving the problems of existence, but few of them 
have had the element of persistence. Robert Owen's 
great plans for others failed to solve the riddle, and 
within three years the commune passed into oblivion! 
To the labors of this distinguished group of educators, 
who were a full half-century in advance of their time, 
Mr, Lockwood pays a beautiful tribute : 

" Immediate results there were none — they were proph- 
ets and seers upon the mountain- top. But one ' cannot see 
'neath winter's field of snow the silent harvest of the future 
grow.' For measured by its after effect the educational ex- 
periment at New Harmony deserves to rank among the most 
important educational movements in this country. The 
precious seed which was sown on frontier soil, after many 
days ripened into a golden harvest. When Owen's social 
system dissipated into thin air, there went forth from brief 
homes on the Wabash men and women who, scattering in 
every direction through the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and 
becoming the instructors of the pioneer youth, sowed in 
almost every isolated hamlet the tenets of the educational 
creed which Pestalozzi and Neef and Maclure had espoused. 



264 Historic Indiana 

Coupled with the actual teaching influence was the pres- 
ence of the eminent scientists who made New Harmony a 
rendezvous, and were themselves bearers of good seed and 
glad tidings. Their achievements and contributions drew 
renewed attention to the best features of the educational 
light that failed."^ 

Various reasons have been ventured as the cause 
of the failure of the vast, unselfish, philanthropic 
scheme. After all are recounted it seems attributa- 
ble to selfishness and the perversity of human nature, 
and the previous living in competitive communities. 
No doubt a more gradual settlement of adherents, 
with Mr. Owen's presence constantly in command, 
would have prolonged the experiment. It was surely 
more benevolent than practical. Mr. McDonald, who 
studied the history of the undertaking, on the prem- 
ises, a quarter of a century afterward, said that there 
were some noble characters among the membership 
who set examples of industry and self-denial worthy 
of a great cause. There were others who came and 
lived as long as they could get supplies for nothing, 
but had no conception of the sentiment of the com- 
munity's foundations. It is touching to read how, 
when one theory failed, with cheerful optimism Mr. 
Owen would substitute another plan; not once or 
twice, but again and again, he would make new ar- 
rangements of the property, to suit new vagaries 
among groups of members. 

" He seems to have forgotten that if one and all the 
thousand persons assembled there had possessed all the 
qualities which he wished them to possess, there would 

» Lockwood, Geo. B., The New Harmony Movement, page 289. 
New York, 1905. 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 265 

be no necessity for his vain exertions to found a com- 
munity, because there would of necessity be brotherly 
love, charity, industry, and plenty; and all of their actions 
would be governed by nature and reason."^ 

By many persons, the entire freedom of opinion and 
absence of any religious bond or authority has been 
assigned as the reason of the dispersion at New Har- 
mony. The partial severing of the family relation, 
by placing the children apart at school, was an ele- 
ment of disintegration. It is agreed that there was 
a deplorable lack of members who were skilful and 
industrious or who were willing to work. Years 
afterward, Robert Dale Owen gave the gist of the 
matter when he said that equal remuneration to the 
skilful and industrious and the ignorant and idle 
must work its own downfall. It must of necessity 
eliminate the valuable members who find their services 
reaped by the indigent, and retain only the improv- 
ident, unskilled, and vicious members. In confessing 
his defeat in the great hall at New Harmony in 1828, 
Robert Owen said : 

" I had hoped that fifty years of political liberty had 
prepared the American people to govern themselves 
advantageously. I supplied houses, the use of capital, 
and I tried, each in their own way, the different parties 
who collected here, and experience proved that the attempt 
was premature. It all proves that families trained in the 
individual system have not acquired those moral char- 
acteristics of forbearance and charity necessary for con- 
fidence and harmony. I can only feel regret, instead of 
anger. My intention now is to form such arrangements 
on the estate as will enable those who desire to promote 

» Lockwood, Geo. B., The New Harmony Movement, page 178. 
New York, 1905. 



266 Historic Indiana 

the practice of the social system to live in separate fam- 
ilies and yet to unite their general labor, or to exchange 
labor for labor, on the most beneficial terms to all, or to 
do both or neither as their feelings or apparent interest 
may influence them; while the children shall be educated 
with a view to an establishment of the social system in the 
future. I will not be discouraged by any obstacle, but 
will persevere to the end,"^ 

Many members of the commune, who took individual 
holdings, remained as residents of the beautiful valley, 
where their descendants still live. It is this remnant 
of former intelligence in the settlement that makes 
the community differ from other sections. At present, 
New Harmony is a little town with some commercial 
ambitions, and takes a pride in its historic past. If 
Robert Owen had done nothing more for the State 
than to bring within its borders his noble family, 
and the famous individuals whom we have men- 
tioned as sojourning, at times, in New Harmony, he 
would still be the most valuable and distinguished 
pioneer of the commonwealth. 

After the passing of the commune, Mr. Owen's 
sons, when not studying or writing elsewhere, re- 
mained as citizens of New Harmony, where he often 
came to visit them. Indeed the most brilliant period 
of New Harmony's history was after Mr. Owen's 
"splendid social bark went to wreck upon the rocks 
and shoals of human nature." Many of the eminent 
scientists continued to make the village their regular 
residence or rendezvous, and other scholars and 
travellers, attracted by the fame of the social exper- 
iment and the scientific researches, travelled thither 

> Lockwood, Geo. B., The New Harmony Movement, page 174. 
New York, 1905. 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 267 

on tours of investigation. From this centre, Thomas 
Say sent out his numerous scientific papers, his finished 
American Entomology and the American Conchology, 
for which his talented wife made the beautiful colored 
illustrations. The gray, gaunt figure of the picturesque 
Rafinesque roamed over the hills about New Harmony, 
collecting botanical specimens, and added his name 
to the illustrious roll of occasional residents. Thither 
came Prince Maximilian von Neuweid, accompanied 
by his taxidermist and illustrator, to preserve the 
results of his excursions into nature's virgin territory. 
He spent the winter of 1832 in making studies in 
natural history, in collecting valuable specimens, and 
having drawings executed. Sir Charles Lyell came to 
study the geological collection and library brought 
together by David Dale Owen. Audubon, the great 
ornithologist, visited the place. Charles Lesueur 
added lustre to the group of resident scientists by his 
publications and his explorations of the Indian 
mounds. It was he who painted the scenery for the 
community theatre, and taught drawing and the arts 
in the school. John Chapplesmith, the engraver, and 
his gifted wife lived in New Harmony the year they 
were making the illustrations for the United States 
Geological Reports, issued by David Dale Owen. Dr. 
Gerard Troost continued his researches in chemistry 
and mineralogy, until called to the University of 
Tennessee. Robert Fauntleroy, who married Jane 
Dale Owen, spent several years in New Harmony, 
making scientific experiments. The name is still one 
of the honored ones in the community. There was 
a whole group of brilliant men associated with David 
Dale Owen in his work as United States Geologist. 
It was in the museum at New Harmony that he treas- 



268 Historic Indiana 

ured his valuable collections made during that survey. 
Another son, Richard Owen, devoted many years of 
useful labor to the State as State Geologist, served in 
the Mexican War, and as Colonel of the 6oth Indiana 
regiment in the Civil War, and afterwards as Professor 
of Natural Sciences in Indiana University. Another 
son, William Owen, had taken an important part in 
the commune as trustee, as an editor of the New 
Harmony Gazette, and as head of their commercial 
relations. Of the most widely known of Robert Owen's 
useful sons, Robert Dale Owen, it has been said, in 
connection with the socialistic community, that he 
was the embodiment of the spirit of his father and 
William Maclure. He believed in its mission, was an 
enthusiastic helper in its maintenance, and regretful 
over its failure. After his labors, he was in New York 
for a time, as associate editor of the Free Enquirer. 
But it is in connection with his work in his adopted 
State of Indiana that Robert Dale Owen's life of 
usefulness became so illustrious. As Mr. John Hoi- 
liday once wrote of him: 

" In scholarship, general attainment, varied achieve- 
ments as author, statesman, politician, and leader of 
a new religious faith, he was unquestionably the most 
prominent man Indiana ever owned. Others may fill now, 
or may have filled, a larger place in public interest or 
curiosity for a time, but no Hoosier was ever so widely 
known, or so likely to do the State credit by being known, 
and no other has ever before held so prominent a place, 
so long, with a history so unspotted by selfishness, du- 
plicity, or injustice." ^ 

Mr. Owen began his political career as a member of 

• HoUiday, J. H., Indianapolis News. 



Social Experiments at New Harmony 269 

the State Legislature of 1836, and was also an Elector 
that year, and one of the most desired speakers of 
the campaign, being a most logical reasoner and 
rising above the rancor and personal attacks of the 
stump speaker. Afterwards he served two terms in 
Congress, and while there was instrumental in passing 
the bill founding the Smithsonian Institute, and, as 
a member of the first Board of Regents, largely guided 
the nature of the work it was to undertake. In 185 1, 
Mr. Owen became the most efficient member of the 
Constitutional Convention of Indiana; and in that 
convention and the following Legislature he merited 
the reputation for unselfish and far-seeing statesman- 
ship. Again it should be remembered that while he 
was in the Legislature his conscientious and persistent 
efforts advanced legislation for women, until he pro- 
cured the enactment of the laws securing their right 
to own and control their separate property during 
marriage, and the right to their own earnings; laws 
which abolished the simple dower of the common law, 
and procured for widows the absolute ownership of 
one third of the deceased husband's property. He 
modified the divorce laws of the State so as to enable 
a married woman to secure a relief from habitual 
drunkenness and cruelty. The women of the country 
owe Robert Dale Owen recognition for his successful 
efforts to establish equitable property rights in one 
State as a pattern for others. In 1851, a group of 
Indiana women presented him with a testimonial of 
their esteem and appreciation of his services to their 
sex; and the State Federation of Clubs is to place a 
portrait bust of the distinguished man in the halls of 
the State-house. Of Mr. Owen's labors for the nation, 
during the Civil War, it would require volumes to 



270 Historic Indiana 

recount in detail, when only a passing mention can be 
made here. He was Governor Morton's most valued 
co-worker. He procured arms and supplies to equip 
the troops hurriedly sent to the front, and looked 
after the men on the field. His stirring appeal to 
President Lincoln, so the President averred, helped 
nerve that great Executive to the issuing of the Eman- 
cipation Proclamation. Mr. Owen served as head of 
the Freedman's Bureau, and he issued a strong protest 
to the Northwest against the proposed compromise 
with the South. He opposed extending the suffrage 
to the blacks, but labored for years as the efBcient 
friend of the freedmen. He served as Charge d' Affaires 
at Naples for six years, and wrote with conviction in 
advocacy of spiritualism. Robert Dale Owen died 
in 1877. In his death "the last of the great figures 
conspicuous in the New Harmony communes passed 
away, but the great movements to which they had 
given origin and direction still sweep onward in an 
ever widening current, — the failure of George Rapp's 
success standing out in vivid contrast to the success 
of Robert Owen's failure." ^ 

Groups of men have impoverished themselves in 
their efforts to alleviate human misery, and for the 
advancement of their fellows-men on the community 
plan; but there is no nobler example than that of 
Robert Owen and his co-workers at New Harmony, 
in their groping toward the light, in the endeavor to 
emancipate humanity from ignorance and poverty. 
This group of illustrious men conferred great honors 
on Indiana. 

» Lockwood, Geo. B., The New Harmony Movement, p. 377. 
New York, 1905. 



CHAPTER XIII 

IN THE FORTIES AND FIFTIES 

NOT the least merit of Mr. Tarkington's story of 
the Vanrevels is the passing glance it gives 
into the social life of the Indiana villages some 
fifty years ago. He embodied in the atmosphere of 
the story, memories of his grandmother's days, and 
the life and hospitalities on the Wabash of which her 
family and their neighbors were representative. This 
phase of the past is apt to escape us. In placing the 
period of Indiana's civilization, we are apt to carry 
forward the pioneer times equally in all districts; 
whereas the southern inland and river towns were 
quite old settlements, before the aborigines were 
banished from the northern third of the State. 

As the Indians were pushed back, the State gradually 
emerged from frontier conditions, and the little towns 
in the southern tier of counties took on themselves the 
pleasures and gayeties of high-life in a provincial way. 
The present generation knows little of this charming 
social life which prevailed in the days before the Civil 
War. As Edward Eggleston said of the town of 
Madison when he first knew it, life took an aspect 
of ease and serenity nowhere shabby, new, or raw. 
It is true the life was simple, as it was elsewhere in 
youthful America, and there was little difference 

271 



272 Historic Indiana 

between the material conditions of the classes, for 
none were vastly rich; but the tone of society was 
the same as in Carolina and Virginia from whence so 
many families had come, and the infusion of Eastern 
blood added to the sterling qualities of citizenship. 
The mellowing grace of family traditions, and past 
history to be lived up to, marked the intercourse of 
these people. Many of the joys were almost rural, 
and there was a mingling of the home-made appoint- 
ments with imported luxuries in household articles 
and furniture. But the personal demeanor and punc- 
tilious manners of the period were far more stately 
and formal than those of the present. The language of 
correspondence, of public addresses, and of personal 
salutation was more elaborate. The style of oratory 
then in vogue may be recognized in this opening of 
a patriotic address on the Fourth of July in 1843, by 
the orator of the day : 

" Once more my countrymen, we are permitted grate- 
fully to behold the Anniversary sun of American Inde- 
pendence. Once more we salute the Star Spangled Banner, 
and rejoice that the cherished emblem of our Union and 
liberty, spotless and peerless as ever, still waves over a 
land and nation. All this assembling of beauty and chivalry 
and intelligence and piety, with religous rites and martial 
music, announce the virtuous emotions over this patriotic 
celebration." 

In the days when such speeches were the custom, 
correspondence was made a fine art. People com- 
posed letters then. Men of political life wrote as if 
for biographical purposes. The belles of the towns 
were constantly receiving and sending scented billets- 
doux, sealed with the little glazed wafers or sealing- 



In the Forties and Fifties 273 

wax. Girls were taught letter-writing and the proper 
way of composing, signing, and addressing letters. 
The swain addressing the fair object of his affections 
in verse or prose, wrote with a quill, inditing flowery- 
paragraphs descriptive of the beauty and grace of 
the object of his gallantry, to whom he prayed to be 
permitted to pay his respects. 

"I am alone and have been gazing upon the mild 
and peaceful moon gliding with majesty through the 
deep blue expanse," writes Almira to her "shining 
specimen of perfection." Continuing, she says that 
"this ever inclines me to sadness more than formerly 
and is a pleasing contemplation in which I love to 
indulge. Perhaps at this moment one that I admire 
at West Point is gazing on the same lovely orb, per- 
haps in the same train of thought. How delightful 
the idea." These elaborate effusions made the greet- 
ings and communication among young people much 
more dignified than the modern "hello!" over the 
telephone, or "so long" in closing a letter. At the 
same time ' ' keeping company ' ' was a very informal 
proceeding. No chaperone was thought of and a 
gentleman's intentions were not sought, until he was 
ready they should be known. 

The service at table was simpler, in that time, and 
the present fashion of serving food had not come in, 
but the quality of the viands in these homes was 
delicious. Housekeepers vied with each other in 
culinary skill. The storeroom and cellar of a house- 
holder, in those bountiful times, would provision a 
half-dozen families of the present day. The "festal 
board " — as it was termed in the poetry of the time — 
fairly groaned with the prodigal variety of dishes. 
The log cabin of pioneer times had been succeeded by 



274 Historic Indiana 

more spacious colonial homes. George Gary Eggleston 
said, reminiscently, that in the early forties the 
thrift and ambition among the well-to-do landowners 
had dotted the region along the Ohio with spacious 
brick dwellings — ^most of them with stately colon- 
naded porticos in front and ornamented lawns sur- 
rounding them. Wealth abounded in the towns and 
luxury was there also. Some of the residences would 
be accounted fine in our large cities of to-day. Speak- 
ing of Madison, which was, during the Crimean War, 
the most important pork-packing centre in all the 
world, and consequently amassed wealth, he said 
that the city was beautiful, with its broad, well-shaded, 
and smoothly gravelled streets, and ornamented 
grounds surrounding all of the best houses. Of Vevay 
it was said that " the town is the most beautiful one I 
have anywhere seen in America." A hint of the style of 
some of these homes may be seen in a description of an 
old one which was being advertised as a young ladies* 
seminary. It was an old residence in 1843, but "its 
large halls, commodious drawing-room and parlors, 
airy galleries and unusual number of bedrooms 
rendered it especially adapted to the needs of a female 
seminary"; which occupied it for a long and flourish- 
ing term of years. 

The drinking of wines and whiskies was almost 
universal before the temperance waves passed over 
the country. Many of the wines and fine brandies 
were imported and came up the river from New Or- 
leans. But the home-made cherry bounce and peach 
brandy were offered everywhere. In the taverns and 
on the boats where men of the world congregated, it 
often happened that drink was deep and play was 
high. In those days, gentlemen prided themselves 




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In the Forties and Fifties 275 

on their own cure of hams, venison, and beef. Game 
was plentiful at all times, and poultry, cream, butter, 
and fruits were abundant and cheap. Chickens could 
be bought for six cents each and turkeys for twenty- 
five cents. Entertaining was not costly, the people 
were heartily hospitable, and the lack of other amuse- 
ments made them largely dependent on one another's 
society. Social visiting seemed to be going on every 
day, in the forenoon as well as in the afternoon and 
evening. In these hospitable homes, large families 
were reared, filling them with gayety and life. To 
them young gallants brought home their blooming 
brides, by stage-coach or steamboat, or mayhap on 
horseback, from the neighboring towns or States. 
When these happy events occurred, a week of village 
festivities set in, always beginning with the "infair" — 
which was the name of the reception given by the 
parents of the groom, and was an invariable custom. 

In some of these homes you would find heavy old 
mahogany furniture, and silver, glass, and "sprigged" 
or gold-band china, which had been brought out the 
long weary way from the East, or up from New Orleans. 
Every spinnet, piano, hauteboy, or four-poster made 
of mahogany which is inherited by the present gen- 
eration represents what was then a treasure, brought 
out West with toil, and patience over long delays. 
Local cabinet-makers skilfully made sideboards, bu- 
reaus, and cupboards of the native cherry wood, 
which ranked next to mahogany in beauty; and these 
pieces are worthy of preservation, as examples of 
good handicraft. 

The fashions for a gentleman were much more elab- 
orate at that time than now. His waist must be of 
the hour-glass form. He wore a colored broadcloth, 



276 Historic Indiana 

claw-hammer coat, finished with a low velvet collar 
and brass buttons, over a buff waistcoat. A black 
satin stock or flowered neckerchief, with flowing ends, 
was worn about the extremely high collar. He wore 
pointed shoes, and the hat that he carried in his 
hand, as he swept a low bow of salutation, was a 
bell-crowned beaver made of white fur. A long 
camlet cloak and gold-headed cane finished the toilet 
of the gentleman on the Wabash in the early forties. 

The manners of the old school went well with the 
picturesque costume of the period. The gentleman 
who flourished his cane as he walked, was much puffed 
out above the waistcoat, by the plaited or ruffed 
shirt-front, and had a fashion of swearing and b' godding 
for emphasis. 

The ladies wore stiff brocades, shining taffetas, 
and peau de soie of quaint designs. If these garments 
had to do duty many more seasons than the frail 
chiffons of the present day, still the material was 
elegant, the style formal, and the gowns were worn 
with the grand dame air of the time. Our modern 
belles still like to reproduce the costumes worn in 
the forties. Capes, mantles, and shawls were the 
outside wraps then in vogue. To obtain the stately 
silks they bartered eighty bushels of com in New 
Orleans for a single yard, and my gentleman gave in 
exchange, one hundred bushels for a yard of broad- 
cloth, and eight bushels for a single yard of cotton 
print. Most beautiful furs were worn in that day. 
The trappers of the West were still sending their 
pelts to the markets, and one of Mr. Astor's agents, 
who had gathered wealth in the fur-trade — one doub- 
loon for John Jacob, and two for himself, making him 
a man of importance by 1840 — dressed his wife in 



d 




The Dress of the Forties. 

From a photograph of the period. 



In the Forties and Fifties 277 

furs that were fit for a queen and they were copied 
by every land speculator's and pork packer's wife 
on the Wabash. 

The universal fashion of that day prescribed very 
full dress skirts, much be-flounced, and worn over a 
large hoop. From the sloping shoulders of the tight 
"basque" a shawl was draped — lace in summer and 
broche in winter. The muffs were enormous, measur- 
ing eighteen to twenty-two inches in length, and a 
deep "perline' was worn about the shoulders. Bon- 
nets were universal for old and young, and their large 
round fronts were filled with a garden of flowers for 
"face trimmings." Men and women travelled about 
everywhere, on stage-coach and steamboat, in these 
showy toilets. For evening, garlands of flowers were 
worn in the hair and around the low neck and skirt 
of the gown, and curls were worn so universally that 
one wonders if fashion has changed the nature of 
locks since then. 

The girls of the little towns were educated at the 
Academy, or had been away to some Young Ladies 
Seminary to be "finished" in music and French. 
Those who went to St. Mary's Convent learned to 
embroider in chenilles, to make wax flowers, and do 
the old masters in cross-stitch. They attempted the 
harp and guitar, and most of them "took piano 
lessons." 

A description of one of these Indiana schools, by 
Mrs. Carleton, gives an excellent idea of most of them. 

" In addition to solid attainments, the young women 
were taught French and German with piano, guitar, and 
harp lessons, vocal music, drawing, and painting in oil 
and water. Piano and guitar-lessons were twenty-five 
cents each, while French, and lessons in painting and 



2 78 Historic Indiana 

drawing were ten cents each, and vocal music at two 
cents per lesson! From North and South, East and West 
came young women to this noted classical school for girls. 
Many of the instructors were from New York State, and 
the pupils were on the records from Oswego and Saratoga, 
from Mobile and New Orleans." 

Ballads were in vogue, and many a sweet girl 
sang in simple style but with fresh young voice, 
"Shepherds have you seen my love?" "The harp 
that once through Tara's halls," and other forgotten 
airs. "Manners" were also taught in every good 
school, including the curtsy and the dance. The 
dancing masters of that day still wore the rufTfled 
shirt, knee breeches, and buckled shoes of the colonial 
period. 

The curriculum of many of the schools was not 
very serious; was generally finished in a couple of 
years and girls married while yet in their teens. When 
the young ladies had finished their schooling, they 
came home bearing their worsted flowers, and were 
welcomed with a June party, while the garden 
roses and honeysuckles made a bower of the porches 
and strawberries were plentiful. A bountiful supper 
followed by cake and ice-cream, mint-julip and punch, 
were the refreshments served in that day. Young 
and old were bidden together and the gentlemen 
were not too blase to enjoy the festivities. When 
once a belle was out of school there were informal 
gayeties going on constantly. Though informal, 
the dancing parties were called balls, and the figures 
of the lancers and quadrilles were as stately as their 
name implied. The ladies in stiff brocades or flounced 
muslins glided through the dance and curtsied deeply 
with due appreciation of their grace and dignity. 



In the Forties and Fifties 279 

Their partners never slurred the music nor hurried 
the low bow. Nothing but the after-supper frolic 
through Tucker ever approached the romp of a modern 
two-step. 

Horseback riding continued to be a very general 
pleasure, long after the pioneer paths through the 
wilderness had broadened into roads. The lady's 
riding-habit of that day had a long flowing skirt, 
sweeping almost to the ground, the gloves worn were 
deep gauntlets, and for gala occasions a plume was 
worn in the hat; at other times a veil floated out 
behind the fair equestrienne. Gay cavalcades of the 
young people attended country parties or a neighbor- 
ing village festival. The carriage of the period was 
a large capacious affair, fashioned like a landeau, 
which had an aristocratic rumble as it bowled along 
the shaded streets. The ponderous steps let down 
with a rattle as the barouche drew up at the curb- 
stone and the door was opened for my much-fur- 
belowed lady to alight. These carriages have entirely 
disappeared and nothing quite so impressive in style 
has taken their place. 

In all Indiana households "before the war," and 
especially in the many homes where dancing was not 
approved of, the favorite entertainment was the tea- 
party, sometimes followed by kissing games. At 
early candle-light, a hostess would assemble her 
guests, young and old, around her table, ladened with 
everything the culinary skill of the time produced. 
The substantial dishes were flanked by pickles, "jells," 
preserves, hot rolls, the feast culminating in that 
pride of the village, "at least three kinds of cake." 
As one of these very hospitable ladies said in her old 
age, "In my time we had a roast turkey at each end 



28o Historic Indiana 

of the table and mashed potatoes in the middle and 
when you sat down you could know there was really 
going to be something to eat." For these occasions 
the treasured silver and egg-shell china were brought 
forth, and home-made ice-cream, then a luxury, 
crowned the feast. It was during this decade that the 
thrifty housewives learned the art of canning fruits, 
and they vied with each other in friendly rivalry 
which could only be decided at the County Fair. 

By this time spinning and weaving were practised 
only in backwoods homes, but sewing-machines were 
not yet introduced and when ladies went to "spend 
the day," they always carried their stint of sewing 
or eyelet embroidery. Spending the day meant 
a bountiful noon dinner and they went at eleven 
o'clock and stayed until five. While they stitched 
wristbands or worked buttonholes, they gossipped of 
neighborhood doings, went over the church troubles, 
and settled affairs of state. These women were as 
alert, intelligent, and interested in questions of the 
day as their descendants of present club-land. In the 
scarcity of literature, books and journals were freely 
loaned and one's volumes sometimes travelled far 
and wide. A copy of Scott, or The Children of the 
Abbey, or Scottish Chiefs, or Moore's Poems some- 
times wandered so far by horseback, or stage-coach, 
that they never returned to their owners again. There 
was not so much literature published every year, in 
those days, but the English classics and standard 
Reviews were familiar to Indiana men and women 
and there was, perhaps, more time for reflection upon 
what they did read. Godey s Ladies' Book and 
Peterson s Magazine were the fashion plates, univer- 
sally consulted by Hoosier ladies for styles and patterns. 



In the Forties and Fifties 281 

In the social life "before the war," there was much 
more light-heartedness and gayety than in the present 
time. The country was in its youth. Communities 
had not plunged into the seething turmoil of social 
unrest. Literature and the drama were not depressed 
by morbid introspection and joyless disillusionment. 
Few were richer than they needed to be, and not 
many more were poorer than they should have been. 
There was little misery to depress the fortunate that 
could not be relieved by my Lady Bountiful sending 
her basket of provisions and necessities to the needy. 
Each neighborhood took care of its own unfortunate 
and shiftless. 

" This gay insouciance, this forgetfulness that the world 
existed for any but a single class," says Lowell, " has 
been impossible of late years. Perhaps opportunity for 
all was the touchstone of blithe spirits. There was a 
cheerfulness and contentment with things as they were, 
which is no unsound philosophy for the mass of mankind. 
It certainly was a comfortable time. If there was dis- 
content, it was individual, and not in the air; sporadic, 
not epidemic. Responsibility for the universe had not 
yet been invented. Post and telegraph were not so im- 
portunate as now. Now all the ologies follow us in our 
newspapers to our burrows and crowd upon us with the 
pertinacious benevolence of subscription books. Even the 
right of sanctuary is denied. One has a notion that in 
those old times the days were longer than now, that a 
man called to-day his own, by a securer title, and held 
his hours with a sense of divine right, now obsolete." 

The West being detached from great cities and their 
depressing poverty, led this unharassed life, and it 
was reflected in the simple joys of their social inter- 



282 Historic Indiana 

course. Indiana towns had few idle persons, work 
was a necessity for all; but there was time for rest 
as well as for toil ; and there was a rural freedom to 
pursue one's bent. 

Hospitality toward incoming settlers was proverbial. 
If a desirable family came into a neighborhood, the 
very fact that it was to cast in its lot with the town 
was enough to warrant a welcome. Naturally, society 
was provincial. In the community all knew each 
other, and felt at liberty to follow their impulses. As 
Mr. Tarkington says, they were a natural people who 
had not learned to be self-conscious enough to fear 
doing a pretty thing openly, without mocking them- 
selves for it. 

An ever-present interest in Indiana was politics, 
and that question certainly absorbed the attention 
of all classes in 1840. The principal events of the 
year, both social and political, clustered about the 
campaign of William Henry Harrison for the Pres- 
idency, against Martin Van Buren, who was then the 
incumbent. Harrison had not only been famous on 
this frontier as an Indian fighter and shrewd in 
management, but had been appointed Governor of 
Indiana while it was yet a Territory, and also was the 
hero of the battle of Tippecanoe. Naturally his party, 
in the State where he had dwelt so long, rallied with 
great enthusiasm to his support. Very spectacular 
mass meetings, barbecues, celebrations, and proces- 
sions were a part of the means to keep up the excite- 
ment of the time. One Indiana celebration is still 
recalled as the most unique of its day. That was the 
great gathering on the scene of General Harrison's 
victory at Battle Ground. From far and near, even 
from New York State to Illinois, the Whigs came in 



In the Forties and Fifties 283 

long processions to the event. There were wagons 
with log cabins on them. Standing in the door, men 
served hard cider from barrels, with a long-handled 
gourd, to the throng as they passed along. Other 
wagons held great canoes filled with young ladies who 
were dressed in white, with sashes of the national 
colors. There were great "floats," made to represent 
the conditions of frontier life when Harrison began 
his career in Indiana; and on these wagons were glee 
clubs singing the lately improvised campaign songs. 
One very popular topical song began : 

"What has caused this great commotion, motion, motion 
the Country through? 
It is the ball a rolling on, for Tippecanoe and Tyler too. 
With them we '11 beat little Van, 
Van, Van is a used up man. 

Farewell, dear Van, 

You 're not our man, 

To guide the ship of state." 

Owing to this enthusiasm, and the "hard times" 
cry which made the masses demand a change, the 
Whigs swept the country when election day arrived. 
Indiana was jubilant over the election to the Pres- 
idency of her favorite candidate. 

About 1840, a very tragic phase in the history of 
the country vitally affected the States along the Ohio 
River. The anti-slavery sentiment, which each year 
had grown more intense, crystallized into organized 
societies, advocating the emancipation of the slaves, 
and rendering assistance to those who stole away 
from their masters and made a break for freedom. 
Although four fifths of the people in the southern 
counties were in sympathy with the South still, 



284 Historic Indiana 

Indiana had many ardent spirits who entered into this 
opposition to slavery. After the passage of the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law, fourteen Northern States practically 
nullified the national statute, by enacting State legis- 
lation for the protection of runaway slaves. Zealous 
opponents of the trafhc sometimes advocated armed 
resistance to the slave-owner seeking to reclaim his 
human chattels. Abolitionists despaired of a remedy 
by law, and gradually worked out a system of friendly 
routes and welcoming stations for fugitive slaves, which 
came to be known as the "Underground Railway." 
The league had boats in which they transported the 
negroes across the Ohio River at five or six points, 
and started them northward. The homes that would 
aid the runaways formed many routes in the chain 
from Dixie to Canada, where the slave reached foreign 
territory and freedom. Solitary and in groups, the 
negroes came trembling across the Ohio in the dead 
of night, shoeless and ill-clad, to the homes of free 
negroes or of their white deliverers. The women 
maintained sewing-circles to prepare clothing for these 
fugitives, and the men carried them forward in wagons 
to the next resident who was known as a member of 
the Underground Railway. In the course of a year, 
thousands of blacks made this effort to escape and 
were helped along the Indiana routes toward freedom. 
Mr. Hanover, the chief of the workers, assured Colonel 
Cockrum that for seven years more than an average 
of four thousand fugitive slaves passed, each year, 
through the hands of the men who were on dut^^ in 
the Indiana district. Not forgetting other human- 
itarians who labored in this cause, it is conceded 
that the members of the Society of Friends were 
among the foremost in acting upon their convictions 




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In the Forties and Fifties 285 

against the traffic in human beings. Benjamin Thomas 
gave a farm at Spartansburg, for a school for the 
fugitives; Benjamin Stanton, Pusey Graves, and 
others pubhshed an anti-slavery paper, without 
profit, for the promulgation of anti-slavery ideas. 
William Lacey, who rescued Eliza, of Uncle Tom's 
Cabin fame, and sent her by the Indiana route to 
Canada, was one of the secret-service band that pa- 
trolled the banks of the Ohio watching for escaping 
slaves, and directing them where they might find 
protection. Levi Coffin's house is said to have afforded 
shelter for thousands of fugitives. Joel Parker and 
Nathan Thomas not only expended untiring energy 
in helping slaves on their way, but they also conducted 
free-labor stores for the many citizens who, at great 
inconvenience to themselves, would not use the 
products of slave labor. Dr. Posey used his coal 
mines to secrete the travellers; and a lumber barque 
was maintained on Lake Michigan to carry fugitive 
slaves across to foreign territory. Orators like Dr. 
Bennett and Mr. Graves lectured throughout the 
State, and elsewhere, amidst great persecution and 
contumely. One of the songs sung at this period to 
arouse enthusiasm for the wronged began: 

" Ho the car Emancipation 
Moves majestic through the nation." 

Colored men who were natural orators spoke at 
these meetings, telling their experiences and struggles 
to gain freedom, making stirring appeals for their 
race, that moved the people to sympathy and action 
in their behalf. The self-sacrificing labors of the 
anti-slavery people, throughout all of those dark 
years, was not undergone for any pleasure there was 



286 Historic Indiana 

in it. Their endeavor came from deep convictions 
prompting them to the performance of hazardous 
duties and distasteful ministrations. The Fugitive 
Slave Law made it a crime to aid escaping slaves, and 
the masters, following close upon the trail of their 
"property," searched houses and caused arrests of 
suspected citizens. Neighbors who sympathized with 
the Southern section scorned the acquaintance of 
the "black abolitionists." Through danger of arrest 
and social ostracism these single-hearted people hero- 
ically maintained their unceasing efforts for the free- 
dom of the slaves, during the forties and fifties; until 
the Emancipation Proclamation removed the necessity 
for their efforts, and the shadow of slavery from the 
land. 

In 1844, the electric telegraph was invented, and 
an Indiana lady, Miss Annie Ellsworth, dictated the 
first message ever transmitted: "Behold what hath 
God wrought." 

An amusing phase of village life at that time in 
Indiana w^ere the primitive appliances for protection 
against fire. Mr. Condit's droll description of the 
conditions at Terre Haute shows them to be typical 
of the other towns of the State : 

" In the early history of the village, the first organ- 
ization of a fire company was, in a sense, no organization, 
that is, the Village Bucket-line brigade was a voluntary 
affair. By common consent, every villager, old and young, 
was a member. Next to the ringing of the bell of the 
public crier and his loud cry, 'A child lost ! ' nothing ap- 
pealed to the sympathies of the community so strongly 
as the midnight cry of, ' Fire ! fire ! fire ! ' The words were 
taken up by every villager as he issued from his gate, 
bucket in hand, on the run, guided by the light of the 



In the Forties and Fifties 287 

blazing building. At the fire every man was his own 
chief, and with a quick eye was called to see, and to do, 
the most needful thing. So each one quickly found his 
place either in rescuing the sick and helpless; in carrying 
out furniture; in manning the pumps or wells; in falling 
into lines for passing the full buckets of water and re- 
turning the empty ones to be again refilled; or it may be 
in standing upon the roof and fighting the flames with the 
buckets of water as they were passed up to him. The 
fiercer the fire the harder the fight, in which every volunteer 
was enthusiastic; knowing that his work was important 
though his place was only in the bucket-line. The Village 
Bucket-line brigade held sway till 1838; when by action 
of the Common Council the first hand engine was purchased. 
This was a real live engine, to be worked and pulled by 
hand, yet it was worthy of having a house and a special 
keeper. In 1839, the Council ordered the following pre- 
miums to be awarded. For the first hogshead of water 
delivered at the fire, three dollars; for the second, two 
dollars; and for the third, one dollar; and after that, 
for every hogshead, till the fire was extinguished, twenty- 
five cents. When a fire alarm came, every drayman in 
town' started on a mad race to the fire; but first it was 
helter-skelter for the river, where his hogshead was quickly 
filled. It was a wild and exciting scramble of odd-looking 
men, and old drays and spavined horses." ' 

Indiana people were greatly disturbed over the sudden 
death of President William Henry Harrison, whom they 
regarded as their own representative; and events did 
not reconcile them to his successor. Naturally the 
Whig element in the State became greatly disgruntled 
with Vice-President Tyler's policy during the remaining 
four years of the term, but the State was largely 
Democratic, and sided with him regarding the annex- 

^Condit,^., Early History of Terre Haute, page 168. NewYork.igoo. 



288 Historic Indiana 

ation of Texas. There was, also, much bluster through- 
out the West during President Polk's campaign, 
over the claims of Great Britain regarding Oregon. 
With the other States west of the Alleghanies, Indiana 
joined in the cry of her own United States Senator, 
Edward Hannegan, of "Fifty-four forty or fight." 
But when the boundary line was peaceably settled, 
by treaty, on the 49th parallel, the South and West 
accepted that solution of the question, and resumed 
the agitation over Mexico's denial of our claims regard- 
ing the Rio Grande, as the boundary line between 
the two countries. Indiana being largely settled by 
people of Southern birth, who scoffed at any fears 
of slavery extension, the State fell in line with the 
prevailing sentiment of the South, and West, as against 
the East, and favored a war with Mexico. Indiana 
village life was greatly excited over the issue. There 
was much speech-making, and "resolving" that Texas 
was in the right. 

W^hen it was declared by the government on May 
15, 1846, that "War existed by the act of Mexico" — 
when she was but defending her own territory — the 
State of Indiana was "roused to arms." In the ap- 
proaching conflict with Mexico, Indiana was ready 
for her part. New England was declaring that the South 
had incited the war, to increase slave territory. The 
majority in Indiana asserted, with the South, that 
Texas was already independent of Mexico; that the 
Republic had asked for annexation, and if it was per- 
sistently refused admission into the Union, might form 
European alliances which the United States would, in 
the end, have to destroy for her own safety. Better an 
immediate war with Mexico, declared the statesmen, 
than to leave Texas in nominal independence, to 



In the Forties and Fifties 289 

involve us in ultimate war with France and England. 
Whatever justice there was in the arguments of the 
factions, it ended in the American army of occupation 
moving towards the border, and when the Mexican 
troops crossed the Rio Grande, volunteers were called 
for amidst the greatest enthusiasm in Indiana. Bells 
were rung, mass meetings were called, and enlistment 
was so vigorous that eight regiments of Indiana 
infantry responded to the call. The services of five 
regiments were accepted by the War Department. All 
of these passed through many of the trials and dangers 
of the war; many companies were decimated by 
disease on the scorched plains and the low river 
banks. Others were fortunate enough to be ordered 
forward, and distinguished themselves in action. The 
First Indiana regiment was left by General Zachary 
Taylor, the commanding General, to languish in the 
miasma at the mouth of the Rio, until, as General 
Patterson said twenty years later, while he knew his 
action in sending the troops on was without authority, 
still it was a venture with humanity at the bottom, 
for such a want of wholesome food, such hopelessness 
in suffering, such wholesale dying, he had never thought 
to see in an American camp. The gallant Third 
Indiana regiment had a more brilliant opportunity to 
make a record at the front. The Second regiment 
suffered from unjust military reports of General 
Taylor and Jefferson Davis, regarding an unequal 
engagement, at Buena Vista; where, fighting a force 
of Mexicans, eighteen to their one, they were called 
by their mistaken Colonel to retreat. In surprise and 
panic they obeyed; but not before they had left 
ninety of their three hundred and sixty men dead or 
wounded on the field. Afterward, the remaining 



290 Historic Indiana 

troops rallied without the Colonel, and fought bravely 
to the end. It is to the honor of the State, that In- 
diana did not give her electoral vote for President 
to General Taylor after his unwarranted report re- 
garding the Second regiment; and the enduring 
enmity of the people followed Jefferson Davis for 
his unfair criticisms. Many of the volunteers from 
Indiana, in this unholy war, as General Grant always 
called it, learned the arts of war in these campaigns, 
only to use their knowledge in the greater civil conflict, 
a few years later on. 

When the treaty of peace was signed in 1848, and 
General Taylor was elected President on the glory 
gained at Buena Vista, the Indiana troops returned 
to their homes, the heroes of their generation. Peace 
celebrations were held in every district, and "Re- 
member the Alamo" was heard on every tongue. 
There are many people still living who recall the 
fervor of the welcome home to the sun-bronzed soldiers 
from the Mexican plains. Many of these volunteers, 
said Judge Ristine, in a touching memorial of his old 
neighbors, sleep their last sleep on the plains of Mexico ; 
others returned to die at home; a few are with us 
yet. Among the settlers of that rude frontier of Texas, 
were Hoosier soldiers who remained to enter lands 
in the new domain. Many of the men who served 
on the long marches over those southwestern plains, 
and the trail to the Pacific, returned in the following 
year on the pilgrimage for the quest of gold. They 
had secured the California country to the United 
States, and explorations had begun immediately; 
gold was discovered and the craze of '49 swept the 
country. Most of the people who went out to the 
coast from Indiana journeyed overland in the long 



In the Forties and Fifties 291 

trains. The gold-seekers travelled in company as a 
protection against the Indians. Besides the dangers 
from the savages, many other hardships were endured 
by the emigrants. Burning deserts were traversed, 
where only alkaline waters were to be found. Six 
months was not an unusual time for the long journey. 
The pace was necessarily snail-like. They travelled 
in covered wagons drawn by horses or oxen. Slowly 
these great caravans plodded the weary way toward 
the Pacific. Indiana women who had been gently 
reared died of sickness and exposure on the way. 
Children were born to them out on the great solitary 
plains, and husbands felt their hold on life slip from 
them, and said farewell to their helpless families, as 
they closed their eyes in death beneath the stars on the 
mountain heights. A few of the Hoosier gold-hunters 
found paying mines ; many others, as the chances for 
fortunes disappeared, straggled back to old Indiana as 
to an Eldorado. Some remained and prospered in 
commercial or professional life. This excitement over 
California gold absorbed the attention of the nation 
from '49 to '53, but nowhere did it enlist more interest 
than among the enterprising and venturesome Hoosiers. 
Along in the fifties, the agitation regarding slavery 
swayed and rocked the nation, and Indiana was a 
storm centre. As General Wallace has said: 

"The whole North was alive with 'isms,' some purely 
sentimental, some sound in morals, each one, however an 
army of zealots. These, it is to be added, all had in their 
organization men of far sight, scheming and struggling to 
bring about a general coalition, without which there could 
be no effective opposition to the Democratic party. It 
was from these nebulous conditions that the new Re- 
publican party was formed. Old party lines were broken 



292 Historic Indiana 

up and many life-long Democrats found themselves aligned 
with Whigs whom they had combated in many a previous 
campaign."^ 

Indiana had been regarded as safely Democratic, in 
the all-powerful grasp of Senators Bright, Thomas A. 
Hendricks, and Joseph E. McDonald, but the Whigs, 
and one wing of the Democratic party, gradually 
joined forces to make up the working staff of the 
Republican party in Indiana. They had, as leaders, 
such men as Henry S. Lane, John Defress, Schuyler 
Colfax, George W. Julian, Owen, Allen, and Morton. 
Through great tribulation and the weighing of prin- 
ciples on the slavery question against a possible national 
conflict, came these thousands of men into the ranks 
of a new political party; and the fifties passed out 
of the calendar of years, in Indiana, amidst sharp 
political divisions between old neighbors; and as the 
decade closed, there were ominous signs of the strife 
which broke upon the country in 1861. 

1 Wallace, Lew, Autobiography. 



CHAPTER XIV 

INDIANA AS AFFECTED BY THE CIVIL WAR 

TO trace Indiana's part in the Civil War would 
be to write her history during that period, 
for Indiana lived the war, and scarcely any- 
thing else for four years. But many of the happenings 
within her borders, during that time, differed from 
some of the Northern States and resulted from the 
character of her early settlement. Governor Morton 
expressed a truth when he wrote to President Lincoln 
that "the case of Indiana was peculiar in that it had, 
probably, a larger proportion of inhabitants of Southern 
birth or parentage — many of these, of course, with 
Southern proclivities — than any other free State." 
Indeed, southern Indiana was considered one of the 
outlying provinces of the empire of slavery. When 
we recall that, as a territory, she was almost rent 
asunder over the question of entering the Union as 
a free State; that the State was admitted with slaves 
still in the possession of a part of the settlers; that 
all of the fourteen counties which comprised the new 
State were mainly settled from slave States, and that 
south of the National Road the Southern sympathizers 
had a controlling political majority; that in 1840, 
when William Henry Harrison was elected Presi- 
dent, but one vote was recorded for the abolitionist 

293 



294 Historic Indiana 

candidate; that in 185 1, when Indiana's new constitu- 
tion was adopted, it included a provision for the exclu- 
sion and colonization of negroes and mulattoes and that 
this article was submitted, as a distinct proposition, 
to the people of the State for their approval, and 
was adopted by a vote of 109,976 to 21,066; again 
that for forty-four years after the admission of the 
State — that is, from 18 16 to the election of Lincoln 
in i860 — the electoral vote of Indiana was given to 
the Democratic party, with the exception of tw^o 
campaigns when William Henry Harrison was the 
candidate of the Whigs in 1836 and 1840; — recalling 
these significant facts in the history of Indiana, it 
will be easy to picture the state of mind which pre- 
vailed at the approach of the war with their Southern 
neighbors, and during that struggle; for all of the 
citizens were not pro-slave in sentiment. 

A visitor to the State a dozen years before the war, 
in commenting on an ordinary national election, as 
he saw it in Indiana, said that a stranger to our 
government, looking on, would naturally suppose that 
it was the last night we were to enjoy our Union; 
would think that the excited parties would never be 
reconciled to the success of their opponents, but rally 
under their leaders and contest their power at the 
point of the sword. It is not difficult to imagine the 
strained relations existing between such violently 
opposed factions, and the result of such sentiments 
during the deplorable conflict. Ties of kindred were 
severed, neighborhoods became divided, the bitter 
dissensions knew no sex, no church, no age. Ministers 
of the gospel took sides, and found Bible texts for 
either side of the question. Newspapers were full 
of incendiary utterances. Orators fulminated and 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 295 

people wrangled and argued as they never have 
since. 

"Ef dey's one thing topper God's worl yo' pa do 
despi'cibly and contestibly despise, hate, cuss, an' 
outrageously 'bominate, it are a Ab'litionist, an' 
dey's a considabul sprinklin' erroun' 'bout de kentry," 
said a knowing Indiana servant before the war. This 
was true of a vast number of the residents who were 
of Southern extraction, — they had a violent hatred 
of abolitionists. On the other hand many of these 
same abolitionists, defiantly if secretly, allied them- 
selves with the "Underground Railway." Slavery 
was just over the border. In their opinion that in- 
stitution was mortally wicked. Danger did not deter 
them from aiding the slave to escape from his master, 
and gain freedom in Canada. Earnest men and women 
in Indiana secretly helped Sambo and Chloe along 
another stage in their journey. The true story of the 
efforts of that secret band — it can hardly be termed 
an organization — would be a thrilling tale. Before day 
dawn; the hunted slave or groups of slaves would 
tremblingly approach a homestead, be quietly given 
a day's rest, shelter, food, fresh clothing, and then at 
night passed on to the next station of the Underground 
Railway. In a few hours more if hunters from the 
South came for their "property," they also must be 
fed, and detained as long as possible. No record, 
perhaps, exists of the members of this society or of 
the unfortunates whom they helped. It was against 
the Fugitive Slave Law and only justified by the 
greater law of humanity. Suspicion often prompted 
espionage, and this engendered hate and recrimination. 
Householders were sometimes imprisoned for helping 
slaves to escape and then it became known that their 



296 Historic Indiana 

neighbors had informed against them. It was not a 
happy time, either North or South, those anti-bellum 
days; and the border States were in a very unhappy 
position which is now fortunately at an end. Composed 
of this divided population, Indiana heard the news 
of April 12, 1861: " Sumter has fallen." An Indiana 
woman who lived and labored through those thrilling 
times afterwards wrote: 

" No man living within the limits of America will ever 
forget that despatch. The old earth itself seemed to reel 
under a blow, and no longer to afford a sure foothold. 
Through the long Saturday, business was at a stand. 
That night, from the banks of the Ohio to the sand-hills 
of Lake Michigan, from the Quaker towns on the eastern 
border to the prairie farms on the western line, the streets 
of Indiana towns were black with breathless people, still 
awaiting tidings of the loyal men in the unfinished Fort 
Sumter, bombarded by the thousands of raging rebels. 
When the banner was unfurled — the banner which within 
the memory of the present generation had only idly flut- 
tered in holiday breezes — a new meaning seemed to stream 
from its folds. At ten o'clock a despatch announced, 
Sumter has fallen, and another. President Lincoln will 
issue a Proclamation to-morrow calling for 75,000 volun- 
teers. Governor Morton's proclamation followed the 
President's. It was as the blast of a war trumpet. In- 
diana's quota of the 75,000 troops was six thousand. 
Fifteen thousand men answered the call. Eight thousand 
came up to the Capital. The clerk dropped his pen, the 
woodsman his axe, the machinist his tools, and more than 
all in numbers, the farmers left their ploughs in the furrows 
and came to their country's call. By dint of coloring 
his hair and beard, an old soldier of 181 2 found his way 
into the ranks. ' If I were only four years younger,' sighed 
Major Whittock, the contemporary of William Henry 
Harrison; 'ninety is not too old in such a cause, and the 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 297 

young people know nothing of war. Fifty years of peace 
have made no soldiers.' " ^ 

Men who had scarcely opened a book since leaving 
school became attentive students of tactics. It is 
averred that for the military terms "right and left" 
it was necessary to substitute "gee and haw" to the 
farmers' boys. In some cases, it is said, officers ordered 
whisps of straw wound round one foot and hay about 
the other, and the drilling began easily with, "hay- 
foot!" "straw-foot!" Of these new recruits, in their 
first engagement, a Confederate General said, "Can't 
make me believe that volunteers stand fire that way," 
and thus Hoosiers entered the four years' contest. 

We cannot follow these troops beyond the bounds 
of the State. They placed their own names in the 
temple of fame. It is a matter of record that an In- 
diana soldier was the first to yield his life on the battle- 
field, and that the last battle of the war was fought 
by Indiana troops. The last Union soldier killed in 
battle was John J. Williams of the Thirty-fourth 
Indiana regiment. Indiana left her dead in seventeen 
States and Territories. Ere the war closed the Hoosier 
state with 246,000 voters had furnished over 259,000 
troops. Three hundred and ninety-five men, only, 
served as conscripts ; and that was after the State had 
furnished 8000 men in excess of her quota, the draft 
being the result of an erroneous computation of the 
muster rolls at Washington. The Indiana soldiers 
were the tallest men in the army, and were noted for 
their droll humor. The first men responded from 
the principle of patriotism and the fire of enthusiasm, 

1 Merrill, Catherine, The Man Shakespeare and other Essays. 
Indianapolis, 1902. 



298 Historic Indiana 

Some joined the army from love of adventure or 
expected glory. Not all that stayed in the service 
were heroes; but "there was no stain upon a single 
regiment or battery of all those sent out by Indiana." 
They bore themselves heroically and no State's soldiers 
won a prouder position. "We now occupy, alone, 
the proud position," said the Journal, "of offering 
volunteers to the government in advance of any call, 
while many of the other States are still behind, even 
with the draft." 

No State could possibly have found herself, on the 
eve of a great war at her very threshold, in a more 
hopeless state of unpreparedness. Indiana had officials 
known as Quartermaster and Adjutant Generals, 
but they were undoubtedly on a peace footing with 
the world. It is doubtful if the whole State could 
have furnished arms for two regiments and the militia 
would not have supplied a half dozen regiments. The 
munitions of war were absolutely lacking. The depart- 
ment had no knapsacks, no canteens, no tents, and 
there was no money. It was a fact that members of 
the legislature and other State officers had been paid 
from the school fund, so empty was the treasury! 
Fortunately in this crisis Indiana had a great man for 
Governor. 

Many a time has been recalled to memory the 
explanation which the wise old Quaker gave Oliver 
P. Morton of the reason why he was not to be elected 
United States Senator. Mr. Foulke tells the circum- 
stances of Mr. Morton having expressed his preference 
for the Senatorship, when the Friend said, "Oliver, 
we cannot let thee go to the Senate." "Why not?" 
asked Morton. "Because thee is a good man for 
either of these places, and Henry Lane would make 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 299 

a good Senator but he would not make a good Gov- 
ernor. So he must go to the Senate and thee must 
stay and be Governor"; and Mr. Foulke very truly 
says that if Mr. Morton could have looked into the 
future and seen the career which opened before him, 
he would have valued the place given him more highly 
even than the Senatorship which he was not to have 
(until in later years), for the very reason that his 
abilities fitted him for the other place. How great 
these abilities were was gradually revealed in every 
pressing need and crisis of the next four years. Loyalty, 
foresight, fearless courage, tireless industry, resource- 
fulness in extremities, tenderness for his soldiers, 
influence over his people, political sagacity, business 
ability, and an intuitive knowledge of men; these 
were the traits of character which Governor Morton 
developed and which made him so successful in his 
administration. 

It may be of interest to younger readers, who have 
come upon the scene since the Civil War, to recall 
the different party elements in the commonwealth 
and the opinions they held at the opening of that 
conflict. The war was not a sudden calamity. Fore- 
bodings of the disaster had been felt in all sections 
of the nation for more than a decade, and party lines 
were drawn on the questions involved in the struggle 
over slavery. In Indiana, at the beginning of the war, 
there were two elements in the new Republican party. 
A large number who had come into its ranks from 
the Democratic party, and others who were conserv- 
ative, were disposed to conduct the war strictly for 
the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of 
the Constitution as it was, and an early pacification 
of the South. The other wing of the Republican 



300 Historic Indiana 

party, chief of whom in Indiana were those illustrious 
men, George W. Julian and his co-workers, stood 
resolutely and uncompromisingly for the abolition of 
slavery, come what might. They felt that Lincoln 
had expressed a vital truth when he declared that 
there could be no lasting peace with a nation half 
slave and half free and they held that the sooner the 
question was settled forever, the better it would be 
for the whole country. Both of these classes of Re- 
publicans came up unitedly and inflexibly to the 
support of President Lincoln and Governor Morton 
in the prosecution of the war until the Union should 
be restored. In the Democratic party there were three 
divisions in the national campaign preceding the war. 
In Indiana, twelve thousand of the party had voted 
for Breckenridge, and were known as the nucleus of 
the party of the anti-war Democrats. Five thousand 
had voted for Bell, the constitutional candidate, and 
Douglas had a following of one hundred and ten 
thousand ; most of whom gradually came to be known 
as war Democrats, and were staunchly loyal. These 
men joined in the plans for a vigorous prosecution 
of the war, and many of them served in the army. 
They held that all party strife should be put aside, 
until the federal authority was again established in 
every State. The anti-war Democrats, called derisively 
Copper-heads, were opposed to coercing the Southern 
States in any w^ay, made a bog>'- of race equality, 
asserted States' rights, and were openly in sympa- 
thy with the Confederates. United States Senator 
Bright from Indiana, who belonged to this branch 
of the party, was expelled from the Senate for alleged 
complicity with the rebellion. Many of his associates 
engaged in secret treasonable organizations, and some 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 301 

of them were arrested for attempting warlike pre- 
parations for resistance to government. From this 
political alignment of the inhabitants of the State, 
it can be imagined that the division of sentiment 
caused much excitement. Present discussions, rancor, 
and political dissensions pale into personal pleasantries 
when compared with the rending of life and limb in 
those combats. It was not all a battle of words. In 
the history of the world, there cannot be found a 
more loyal people than the patriotic population of 
Indiana was. They not only rallied at once to the 
support of the government by sending more troops 
than were called for, but among those who did not 
go to the line of battle there was a great loyal majority 
who upheld the hands of the Governor. 

Business men subscribed money, forwarded supplies, 
and went to the front with goods and provisions for 
the soldiers. Indiana men organized the first Sanitary 
Commission, and the people supplied the funds for 
it to furnish the comforts and necessities which the 
government could not. Citizens served on this Com- 
mission without pay, and followed the soldiers on 
the march, in camp, and in the hospital, with every- 
thing needed for the sick or wounded. Governor 
Morton took special pride in the Commission's work 
and was never tired of devising ways and means of 
improving its efficiency. Four hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars' worth of supplies was donated by 
private contribution through this channel by the 
people of the State. Nor were the women of the 
State backward in patriotic endeavor. They toiled 
unremittingly during the entire war. In October 
of the first year of the struggle. Governor Morton 
issued an appeal to the patriotic women of the State, 



302 Historic Indiana 

calling their attention to the approach of winter and 
the possibilities of suffering which the troops would 
undergo unless help from other sources than the gov- 
ernment should reach them. He asked for blankets, 
knit gloves, socks, and hospital supplies. The response 
to this suggestion was so liberal that, in the latter part 
of the winter, the Quartermaster-General issued a 
letter stating that there were already enough con- 
tributions to supply the needs. What was sent? 
Necessities, comforts, and luxuries. Women canned 
fruit for the soldiers; they knit stockings and mittens 
for them. Aid societies made great bales of hospital 
shirts and warm underwear; children spent their 
Saturdays and holidays in scraping lint and rolling 
bandages. They wrote kindly letters and placed them 
in the useful "house-wife," which was a bag made 
with pockets and filled with needles, buttons, and 
patches for the soldiers' use. Each company that 
started for the front was accompanied to the station 
or boat-landing by the whole village, cheering them 
on to duty, and lading them with good things to eat. 
Every passing regiment was hurriedly given a feast in 
the court-house or station. As one of these noble helpers 
wrote: "And people did not tire of liberality. Hands, 
houses, and hearts were open to our soldiers. The 
war was no sixty -day affair, as had been promised. It 
went on and on, and recruiting went steadily on. 
The troops in the capital, though always changing, 
were never gone." Many Indiana mothers saw every 
son march away to the army. Tenderly reared women 
went as hospital nurses. Brides of an hour said good- 
bye to their soldier lovers, and old gray-haired fathers 
went into the harvest fields that the sons might serve 
at the front. 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 303 

Robert Dale Owen, who himself stood next to the 
War Governor in tireless labors for the soldiers, was 
appointed by the Executive as agent, and purchased 
all the arms and equipment for the State with honor- 
able and efficient ability. From some of the colleges 
of Indiana every man went that was able to go to 
war. Several of these schools closed for w^ant of 
students until after the struggle w^as over. In any 
estimate of the progress made by Indiana, it must 
always be borne in mind that the State lost a valuable 
element of her population in the men who died during 
those four years, which detracted greatly from her 
future greatness. 

At the opening of the war, not only individual 
citizens but the State, through its Legislature, responded 
to the call of the War Governor. Later, as we shall 
see, the Executive had to meet a newly elected Legis- 
lature w^hich tried his soul to the last extremity, by 
their lack of loyalty, but the men who were assembled 
in extra session in April, 1861, voted and placed under 
the control of Governor Morton, within a fortnight 
after the fall of Fort Sumter, a half million dollars 
for arms and ammunition, and one hundred thousand 
for military contingencies. They also voted a million 
dollars for enlisting, maintaining, and subsisting troops. 
Responding with vigor to the sentiment of the people 
of Indiana, the Legislature (then in office) sustained 
the Governor in his arduous task. With all of this 
great patriotism on the part of the large majority of 
the people of Indiana, there was a minority whose 
acts afforded some reason for the Confederate General 
Morgan supposing that his invasion of the State in 
1863 would be welcome to a larger following than he 
found. As there were Union people within the Southern 



304 Historic Indiana 

States, there were also Secessionists in the North, and, 
so far as they could, and dared, the Southern sym- 
pathizers in Indiana plotted and conspired against 
the Executive and endeavored to thwart his plans 
for the defence of the nation. To-day we can afford 
to forgive, but mention of the proceedings of this 
minority in Indiana, during the war, is necessarily 
a part of its history. Steadily but secretly the leaven 
of disloyalty to the government and its policies per- 
meated one section of the conservative party. In 
several counties of the State, secret organizations 
were effected, and conspiracies against the government 
were planned. Military drill was a part of the business 
of the regular meetings of the "Knights of the Golden 
Circle" and the "Sons of Liberty," as these secret 
societies called themselves. The Union neighbors and 
old friends of the men in these bands debated with 
and counselled them in vain, on the futility and wrong 
of their plans. When the war had gone on through 
two years they became bolder in their teachings and 
movements. 

There had been disastrous battles at the front, the 
Emancipation Proclamation had been issued, there 
were large numbers of Union men absent serving in 
the army, and treasonable sentiments grew more out- 
spoken. Owing to these circumstances it had come 
about that at the Congressional elections of 1862 
many of the returns went against the administration, 
and, excepting the Governor, all of the State ofificers 
and a majority of the Legislature who were elected 
were Democrats and many of these were anti-war 
men. The Legislature sought to enact laws tying 
Governor Morton's hands in enlisting troops and 
raising militia. To prevent the passage of such a 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 305 

law the Union legislators withdrew from the sessions 
until the term closed by limitation. Governor Morton 
said, in his carefully prepared message to this seditious 
Legislature: "I believe that the masses of men of all 
parties are loyal and are united in their determination 
to maintain our government, however much they 
may differ upon other points; and I do sincerely 
hope that all will be willing to subordinate their 
peculiar opinions to the great cause of preserving 
our national law and existence." Even after this 
appeal secessionist sympathizers of this Legislature 
continued throughout the session to oppose, obstruct, 
and misrepresent the acts of the Executive and the 
Federal officials. Mr. Foulke says in his biography 
of Governor Morton: 

" Scores of grotesque and preposterous resolutions 
were tossed into the seething cauldron. There were 
propositions for an armistice, for a withdrawal of the 
Emancipation Proclamation, for peace conventions to 
consider impossible compromises. There were dismal 
wailings at the calamities of war, at the overthrow of 
'sacred rights and liberties' by 'tyrants and usurpers,' — 
incoherent ravings against the President, the Governor, 
the Abolitionists, the Negroes, the ' Massachusetts Yan- 
kees,' — a great tumult of words and dissonant eloquence." ^ 

But Mr. Foulke goes on to show what a stinging rebuke 
was administered to this misguided Legislature, by the 
letters and resolutions from the army of 60,000 soldiers 
in the field, who were naturally enraged and indignant 
over these stabs in the back. Their protests became 
general , and on the twenty-third of January resolutions 
adopted by the officers of twenty-two regiments and 

' Foulke, William Dudley, Life of O. P. Morton. New York, 1904. 



3o6 Historic Indiana 

four batteries and approved by the soldiers were 
sent from the Indiana troops at Murfreesboro. These 
protests were followed by similar representations from 
the soldiers at Corinth, in Arkansas, and from the 
Army of the Cumberland. Said this remonstrance 
from the soldiers to the Assembly : 

" We have watched the traitorous conduct of those 
members of the Legislature, who, misrepresenting their 
constituencies, have been proposing a suspension of hos- 
tilities, plotting to divest Governor Morton of the rights 
vested in him by our State Constitution and laws, and 
we calmly and firmly say: ' Beware of the terrible retribution 
that is falling upon your coadjutors at the South, which, 
as your crime is tenfold blacker, will swiftly smite you 
with tenfold more horror should you persist in your dam- 
nable deeds of treason.' " 

To be fair, it must be borne in mind that Indiana was 
not alone in having Southern sympathizers within its 
borders. All of the Northern States had this to con- 
tend with ; but these communications, coming directly 
to the Legislature from the army, were marvellously 
efficacious in clearing the atmosphere about the State- 
house. They enabled the legislators, at least, to see 
national patriotism in its true perspective, and modest 
resolutions were passed protesting against being mis- 
understood. 

Encouraged by the evil example of their lawmakers, 
the Southern sympathizers in the State grew more 
bold and insolent. Secret societies, with disloyal 
intent, multiplied; and leaders were found who en- 
deavored to alienate the people from their loyalty and 
to organize the disloyal element. Cheers were heard 
for Jeff Davis, and there was always some one ready 
to respond "a rope to hang him with." Peace at any 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 307 

price, even the recognition of the Southern independ- 
ence, was the purpose of those in control of the Legis- 
lature, and of those who were members of these 
societies. Assassination of the Governor was openly 
threatened. In the back districts men and women 
wore homespun clothes dyed with butternut juice; 
and in the towns many of them wore brooches made 
of the shell of a butternut, to denote their sympathy 
with the South. 

A conspiracy to overthrow the State government was 
planned. And this too at a time when our national 
existence hovered between life and death. In the 
words of Mr. Foulke : 

"At other periods it would have been only a subject 
for scornful jest, but at that time was dangerous, and 
demanded additional energy from those who had already 
expended the strength of Hercules in the efforts to subdue 
an armed rebellion. It was fortunate that there was at 
this time at the head of affairs in Indiana a man whose 
resources were equal to every emergency, whose autocratic 
will supplied everything there was lacking in a disloyal 
Legislature and a partisan judiciary."^ 

Governor Morton said of this period, a dozen years 
afterwards in the United States Senate, that the State 
was honeycombed with secret societies formerly known 
as the Knights of the Golden Circle and later as the 
Sons of Liberty. They claimed to have 40,000 members 
in the State; they were lawless, defiant, plotting 
treason against the United States and the overthrow 
of the State government. In some counties their 
operations were so formidable as to require the militia 
to be kept on a war footing, and throughout 1863 and 
until the final explosion of the organization in 1864 

» Foulke, William Dudley, Life of O. P. Morton. New York, 1 904. 



3o8 Historic Indiana 

they kept the whole State in agitation and alarm. 
Certain leaders of the Democratic party felt them- 
selves handicapped in their ambitions by these or- 
ganizations. So bold were they in the summer of 
1863 that General John Morgan of Kentucky was en- 
couraged to invade the State with his forces, in the 
belief there would be a general uprising in his support. 
In 1864, so numerous were these organizations and 
so confident were they of their strength, that they 
matured a plan for a general uprising in the city of 
Indianapolis on the sixteenth of August. The plan 
that was discovered, as shown by the subsequent 
confession of some of the leading conspirators, was 
to march on the capital city, release on that day 
about 7000 Confederate prisoners confined at Camp 
Morton, seize the Arsenal and arm these prisoners, 
overturn the State government, and take possession of 
the State. The arrival of a detail of infantry hastily 
broke up the mass meeting. 

" Some of the more frantic climbed on the shoulders 
of those in the rear in their efforts to escape. The order 
was given to search every man attempting to leave the 
city. Three hundred revolvers were taken from the pas- 
sengers on one train. Hundreds of them were thrown 
through the windows by their owners, into Pogue's Run. 
Pistols were given to women, believing that they would 
not be searched. Seven were found on one woman. Thus 
ended the farcical Battle of Pogue's Run, whose waters 
were filled not with the blood of combatants, but with 
firearms prudently cast away." ^ 

The whole plan having been discovered, was abandoned 
and denied by the leaders, three of whom were State 

• Griffith, Frank. Detailed for this duty from 83d Regiment. 
Indianapolis Star, August 23, igo8. 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 309 

officers ! They quickly sent out orders countermanding 
the march of the forces on Indianapolis. In a short 
time the seizure of arms and ammunition collected 
at Indianapolis for treasonable purposes (some of 
them labelled Sunday-school books) and the capture 
of the records and the rituals of the Sons of Liberty, 
as well as the arrest of eighty of the ringleaders, 
gradually caused the breaking up of organizations 
in the more remote neighborhoods. By actual in- 
voice it was learned that in two of the preceding 
months nearly 30,000 guns and revolvers had been 
brought into the State, followed at later times by 
larger quantities of arms for the bands amounting to 
60,000 revolvers and 6000 muskets. The Southern 
records show that these organizations and the leaders 
of the Confederacy were in constant correspondence 
and negotiation by a cipher code. Later when the 
tide of war was turning against the South, in 1864, 
the greatest hope of succor of Jefferson Davis's Cabinet 
was from the treasonable societies of the North, and 
the States which bordered on the Ohio River were 
depended upon for an uprising against Federal control. 
While the administration was struggling with trea- 
sonable legislators and bands within its borders, the 
whole Commonwealth was startled by a raid upon 
its own soil. There had been two scares previous 
to this, but on July 8, 1863, there occurred one of the 
most daring, most spectacular events of the war. This 
was the invasion of Federal territory along the Ohio 
River, with the avowed purpose of bringing the war 
home to the Northern States, and giving the Southern 
sympathizers an opportunity to show their colors and 
join their friends from the South. There had never 
been any arrests of Southern sympathizers up to 



3io Historic Indiana 

this time and no tests were made of their courage. 
General John Morgan, commanding between two or 
three thousand Confederate cavalry, was cut off from 
Bragg and Buckner's army and determined to carry 
the war into the enemy's country, make an "astounding 
diversion " that would call off some of the Federal 
forces that were pursuing his chief. Probably six 
hundred adventurers bent on plunder were with this 
troop. It was a brilliant cavalry manoeuvre, from 
a military standpoint. War is no holiday play, and 
the raid won lasting notoriety for its commander, but 
he was disappointed in its results; for few if any 
Northern secessionists joined him. He found that all 
the men he added to his numbers, he was obliged to 
capture. 

It is said that riding at the head of his troops to 
the Kentucky shore. General Morgan dramatically 
pointed to the northern bank of the Ohio River and 
said, "Boys, over there is Yankee land, we will cross 
over and possess it " ; and that after they were safely 
over, he ordered the boats burned, denoting no in- 
tention of a return and no chance of being followed 
by the Federal troops who were close upon their heels ; 
so near, in fact, that the Johnny Rebs in the boats 
called back to some of them, " Got any word want 
sent your ma? " 

The present generation can make a very fair estimate 
of this "secesh" element of the Indiana backwoods 
population, from a little lifelike sketch by George S. 
Cottman. He introduces it with a description of a 
"Dixie" neighborhood where these poor whites lived 
in their log cabins in the woods. Isolated not only 
by location but by nature these squatters remained 
Southern in sentiment and sympathy. 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 311 

" Stray newspapers, carried in like bones into a den, 
to be read at leisure, passed from hand to hand and so 
kept them apprised of the doings of the outside world. 
Suddenly the news came that John Morgan was invading 
the state and the squatters in ' Dixie ' settlement met to 
consider the question of joining him. 

" One day Mr. Jabez Baughman issues a call for all 
Dixieites to convene at his cabin that evening to discuss 
questions of moment. Of the resultant meeting no minutes 
were preserved; you will find no mention of it in the 
Adjutant-General's reports, nor elsewhere, and the only 
authority I can claim for it is the oral account of Mr. 
Andrew Jackson Strickler, a member of the convention, 
who afterwards became reconstructed and reconciled to 
the Government. As faithfully as I can quote him here 
he is, Tennessee dialect and all: ' It was,' said Mr. Strickler, 
'in July of '63. I disremember adzactly the date, but 
it was after the hayin' was done an' the wheat harvest 
about over. We heerd tel' o' John Morgan crossin' the 
river an' headin' our way, an' was consid'ble intrusted 
like, an' so w'en Jabe Baughman's boys went eroun' the 
settlement tellin' all the men folks their pap wanted us 
to meet at their house late that night, we jest natchally 
fell in with it, kase we knowed from the sly way it 'as 
done thar was somepin' up. None of us was to come 
till after ord'nary bed-time, an' none of us was to carry 
'ary light, an' that putt ginger in it, see? Well, w'en 
night fell the weather got ugly, and I mind, way about 
ten o'clock, as I felt my way through the thickets, how 
everlastin' black it was, an' how the wind rasseled the 
trees erbout, roarin' like a hungry lion seekin' who he 
may devour. It made me feel kind o' creepy, kase it 
'peared like the elerments an' man an' everything was 
erbout to do somepin' — kinder like the bottom was goin' 
to drap out o' things, y' understand. 

" 'Well, the fellers come steerin' into Jabe's one by one, 
an' by 'leven o' the clock ever' man in Dixie was thar. 



312 Historic Indiana 

Jabe's young 'uns an' womern folks hed been sent out in 
the stable to sleep, an' so ever'thing was clair fer business, 
but we all sat eround talkin' hogs for a spell, kase we felt 
a mite unsartin; but by-m-by Baughman, says he: " Gent'- 
I'men, I call this meetin' to order." Then my oldest boy 
whose name was Andy, too, and who 'd been to two or 
three public meetin's before an' felt kind o' biggoty over 
it, he hollers out; "I second the motion." Then young 
Jerry Stimson says; "I move that Mr. Baughman take 
the cheer," an' my boy seconded that, too, an' it was so 
ordered. Then Baughman riz an' said he hadn't hardly 
expected that honor (which was a lie), but sence they 
had putt it on him he'd try to discharge his duties to the 
meetin'. 

"'After that we made young Stimson secatary, seein' 
he was somepin' of a scholard, an' then Jabe he made us 
a speech sayin' as how we'd orto stick by the grand old 
South, w'at was even now sendin' her conquerin' hosts 
to our doors, an' how we'uns should be ready to receive 
her to our buzzums. It wa'nt all quite clear to me, an' I 
ast how we was goin' to take her to our buzzums. "Wy, 
give her our moral s'port," says Jabe. "How '11 we give 
our moral s'port," says I, an' then says Jabe slow an' 
solemn like: "Gent'l'men," says he, "w'en our sister 
States found it was time fer 'em to be up an' adoin' — 
w'en they found the Union wa'nt the place fer 'em, w'at 
did they do?" Here Jabe belt his fire, an' ever'thing was 
stock-still fer a spell, w'ile the wind howled outside. It 
'peared like no one hadn't the grit to tackle the question, 
an' Jabe had to do it hisself. "Gent'l'men," says he, 
"air we men enough to run risks for our kentry? W'en 
John Morgan 's histes the flag of the grand ol' Confede'cy 
over the Injeany State House who 's goin' to come to their 
reward, them as helt back skeert, or them as give him 
their moral s'port?" 

" 'At this my boy Andy who was gettin' all het up like 
with the idee o' doin' somepin', bellers out: "Mr. Cheer- 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 313 

man, I move 'at we air all men, an' 'at we ain't afeerd 
to give the South our moral s'port." Then Jabe grabbed 
the cow by the tail an' w'ipped her up. " Do I understand 
the gentl'man to mean," says he, "that we'd orto do 
w'at our sister States hez done, an' draw out o' this yere 
Union, an' ef so, will he put a movement to that effeck 
before the House?" "I make a move then," says Andy 
again, as bold as Davy Crockett, "that we don't whip 
the devil eround the stump no more, but that we git out 
o' the Union an' we git out a-flyin'." I was right proud 
o' the boy, not kase I thought he had a dum bit o' sense, 
but kase he went at it with his coat ofE like a man bound 
to make his mark. That got all of us spunky like an' nigh 
ever' one in the house seconded the move. Then says 
Jabe: " GenTmen, the question is before you, whether 
we will lend the Southern Confeder'cy our moral s'port 
an' foller our sister states out'n the Union. All in favor 
of this yere motion signify the same by sayin' 'aye.'" 
"Aye," says ever' livin' soul with a whoop, fer by that 
time we shore was all runnin' in a flock. " All contrary- 
wise say no," says Jabe, an' we all waited quiet fer a 
minute, kase that 'as the proper way, y' know, w'en all 
of a suddent, above the roar o' the wind outside, thar 
was a screech an' a tremenjus racket; the ol' house shuk 
like it was comin' down; the daubin' flew from the chinks, 
an' overhead it 'peared like the ol' Scratch was clawin' 
his way through the clabboards. Next he came a-tearin* 
at the floor of the loft above us, an' a loose board swingin' 
down hit Jabe a whack an' knocked the candle off'n the 
table, an' the next thing it was black as yer hat. Jabe 
I reckon, was consid'able flustered, kase he gathered, 
hisself up an' yelled: "The Devil's after us — git out o' 
here, fellers! " An' you bet we got. 

" 'It tuck me a full hour to find my way home through 
the bresh, an' w'en I did git thar, at last, an' was tryin' 
to tell w'ich side o' the house the door was on, I bumped 
up, agin Andy groopin' his way too. "Andy," says I, 



314 Historic Indiana 

**I move we git in jest as quick as the Lord '11 let us," 
an' says Andy, "I second the motion." 

*' 'The next day w'ens we went back to Baughman's to 
see w'at we c'ud lam we found a good-sized ellum had 
keeled over again the roof-poles an' poked a limb down 
through the clabboards. It 'as never settled among us jest 
w'at it meant. Some said it 'as the Lord's way of votin' 
no again our goin' out o' the Union, an' others allowed 
it was the Lord's way o' savin' us from our brashness, 
kase, as ever' one knows, John Morgan didn't git to Injun- 
oplis after all, an' as things turned out it wa'nt jest best 
fer us ti be seced, y' know.' " 1 

It was this sort of disloyalty, north of the river, 
that all unwittingly, the dashing cavalrymen were 
depending upon. Crossing the Ohio River General 
Morgan entered Harrison County in Indiana and passed 
eastward across the entire river districts and on 
into the adjoining State of Ohio. His plans were well 
laid and he was extremely bold in action. Through 
farm and village they swept capturing and paroling 
prisoners, appropriating the finest horses as they 
went, helping themselves to the fat of the land, as 
is the wont of military raiders. Out through every 
town in the State alarm bells were rung and the 
Governor's call for troops was sounded. The response 
was magical. Within forty-eight hours sixty-five 
thousand men had tendered their services, and were 
on their way to report for duty. Within three days, 
thirty thousand men, fully armed and organized had 
taken the field at various points to meet the enemy. 
Not being expected, on first landing Morgan's men 
found only a handful of troops to oppose them, and 

> Cottman, George S., Indiana Magazine of History, page 52, 
vol. i., number i. 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 315 

these were driven back; but within twenty-four 
hours, when attempting to penetrate into the interior 
of the State and afterwards to retire across the river, 
they were confronted in both attempts by bodies of 
armed men. Soon their march was quickened into 
a flight which in five days, carried them across the 
eastern border into Ohio and on over that State. Those 
were five exciting days in Indiana and the other 
border States. Frantic telegrams for help from raided 
towns, and daring dispatches from the invaders, 
wherever they had tapped the telegraph lines, located 
the raiders now here, now there. The Confederate 
general was so rapid and sudden in his movements 
as frequently to confound both friends and enemies. 
Morgan's army was reported as ten, twenty, and 
thirty thousand strong. The atmosphere was rife 
with excitement. Unharvested fields of over-ripe 
wheat stood golden in the sun. No raid had been 
believed possible by the farmers. Burning barns 
was fun as well as policy to this band. As they went 
they emptied ovens and pantries. Money and horses 
were gathered in as necessities of war. The banks 
throughout the State sent their gold and most of 
their currency to New York. People concealed their 
valuables and men hurried to enlist. Cold shivers 
reached even to the Capital. The damages in the 
raided States, to railroads, steamboats, bridges, and 
public stores was not less than ten millions of dollars. 
The troops plundered private properties, burned all 
bridges to prevent pursuit, detached parties right 
and left to cut off communication and destroy 
stores. 

And what of the invaders? It was an adventurous 
band. From an interesting note-book of one of the 



3i6 Historic Indiana 

troop we learn their feelings when two broad States 
lay between them and their comrades. 

"Kentucky grew too warm for us and we determined 
to cross over into Indiana and try to stir up the Copper- 
heads. We had no trouble in supplying provision. The 
chickens strolled before the doors with a confidence that 
was touching but misplaced. The good women baked 
wheaten bread in large quantities twice a week and we 
took the whole baking. The raw militia that was en- 
countered were badly armed and had had no drill. A 
great fear seemed to have fallen upon that part of Indi- 
ana and they acted as if stunned. Often our men would 
throw away plunder to pillage afresh, generally without 
method or reason. A horn, seven pairs of skates, a bird 
cage, and cards of horn buttons would dangle from one 
man's saddle. The disposition for wholesale plunder 
exceeded anything that any one had ever seen. The men 
seemed actuated by a desire to pay off in the enemy's 
country, all the old scores that the Federal Army had 
chalked up in the South. The fatigue of the marches was 
tremendous. We often averaged twenty-one hours in 
the saddle. There was battle and death and destruction, 
but many ludicrous things happened during our raid. 
We rode into Salem and a small swivel gun, used by the 
younger population, four days before, for the Fourth of 
July Celebration, had been planted to obstruct our way. 
It was about eighteen inches long, loaded to the muzzle 
and mounted in the public square, by being propped 
against a log of fire wood. It was not fired for the man 
deputed to perform that important duty, somewhat 
astounded by our sudden dash into the town, dropped 
the coal of fire with which he should have touched it off, 
and before he could get another the 'rebels' captured 
the piece." 

At Vernon, the Confederates were confronted by 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 317 

several hundred hastily gathered militiamen. To 
Morgan's demand for their surrender the raw troops 
replied, " Come and take us " — but the enemy moved 
off toward Dupont. 

Sometimes a mischievous cavalryman would coerce 
a farmer's daughter into riding a part of the way with 
the troop, and then set her down at a farmhouse far 
away from home. Often a whole squad would occupy 
the front porch while waiting for the good dinner 
they had compelled the household to cook for them. 
A favorite trick of the raiders was to send alarming 
messages to the towns farther north that they were 
at their doors; and another was to "cut in" and 
take messages and orders that w^ere intended for the 
Federal officers who were after them; or listen to the 
news of the panic they were causing in the State. All 
this frolic, and many dark and terrible experiences 
fell to the lot of the invaders as well as to the residents 
of the river counties. The loss of life on either side 
was not great, perhaps, but all too many when it is 
remembered the combatants were from sister States. 
Some of the raiders crossed to Kentucky. Over in 
Ohio the commander, and those who had not been 
killed or wounded, were captured. An amusing story 
is told of an Irish Quartermaster who was captured 
by Morgan on one of these forays. 

"Lieut. Igoe had a horror of regulations. Monthly, 
quarterly, and semi-annual reports, required by the de- 
partment, were treated with easy neglect; not that the 
eccentric Quartermaster did not honestly discharge his 
duties; but because he regarded all such reports as 'a 
piece of magnificent tomfoolery.' A twelvemonth went 
by, and no report had been received at Washington of 
the state of affairs in the Quartermaster's department 



3i8 Historic Indiana 

of the Irish Regiment. A note from headquarters to the 
Colonel brought the report question to a head. Igoe at 
once gathered up all his receipts, vouchers, and loose 
papers, and putting them carefully in a keg, headed up 
the concern, and respectfully forwarded them to Washing- 
ton, with a note, stating that as the clerks in the depart- 
ment had more time than he had, they could assort and 
arrange the papers to suit themselves; remarking, too, 
that if they could make anything out of them, it was 
more than he could do himself. The reply from Washington 
was what might have been expected. Notice was served, 
that if he did not make out a report in full form, he would 
be sent for. Nothing disconcerted, the subject of our 
sketch sat down, and, as report goes, wrote the following 
exceedingly polite letter: 

" ' Headquarters Irish Regiment, 
" ' Quartermaster's Department. 

" ' Dear Sir: — Your kind and friendly note of the 

inst. is before me. I regret exceedingly you can not make 
anything out of the keg-full of papers forwarded some two 
months ago. In order to facilitate the solution of the diffi- 
culty, I take pleasure in sending another box-full. I have 
long contemplated a visit to the capital of this mighty na- 
tion; but my finances being in such a dilapidated condition, 
I have been forced to forego that pleasure. I will be pleased 
to make a visit to your, I am told, delightful city, under 
the auspices, and at the expense, of our much afflicted 
Government. 

" ' Accept the assurance of my most distinguished con- 
sideration. 

" 'M. Igoe, 
'' ' Lieut. & A. Q. M.' 

"Of course the bureau of 'Contracts and Quartermas- 
ters' was not satisfied; but John Morgan, having a short 
time afterwards captured the hero, with his books, papers 
(all not 'kegged up'), and wagons, Igoe made a final 
statement, and a satisfactory settlement, by stating in 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 319 

a humorous way the facts and incidents of his capture. 
It has been his boast ever since that John Morgan kindly 
settled all his affairs, with the big ' conostrophies ' at 
Washington." 

A Confederate who was with General Morgan thus 
describes the end of the raid. 

"Straight ahead he rode, passing the Indiana border 
and thundering desperately on upon the highways of 
Ohio. On he swept, brushing aside one foe, eluding another, 
and defying the telegraph, the steam-cars, the Generals, 
the swarming Militia. No time for the rest nor to replace 
the vitality that was constantly being expended. . . He 
baffled his enemies in three states. From day to day 
his men were killed or captured, singly or in groups. An- 
other Sunday dawned, the 26th of July. There were 
left only three hundred of the three thousand troops who 
had crossed less than a month before. Many of the men, 
feverish almost to delirium from wounds received in 
fights on previous days, reeled in their saddles as they 
went. About two hundred of his command crossed the 
river and escaped. General Morgan and a few hundred 
men were finally driven to a bluff from which there was 
no escape, except by fighting their way through or leaping 
from a cliff. Finding themselves thus cooped Morgan's 
command surrendered. The gray fox was cornered at 
last in the open, but he had led a long chase." 

The five hundred miles and more that they had trav- 
ersed had been a succession of sudden encounters, 
skirmishes, and battles. Fire, panic, terror, and 
sorrow followed in their wake. The same Confederate 
asks, "Was anything accomplished by them save their 
own destruction?" I will answer, "Yes: the victory 
six weeks later by Bragg's Confederate Army in the 
great battle of Chickamauga. Of the forty thousand 
Northerners that we were led to believe would join 



320 Historic Indiana 

us not one rose up to help." The Confederate troopers 
taunted the inhabitants of the region openly, with 
being a pack of cowardly curs, who could plot in 
secret, and stab in the dark, and curse the Govern- 
ment, but when it comes to fighting like men would 
not come out in the open. By superior numbers and 
equal bravery, the hastily assembled Northern volun- 
teers had hedged in the raiders, defended assailed 
points, repulsed attacks, fought many skirmishes, and 
finally captured or dispersed the whole command. 
They had been greatly delayed in accomplishing their 
task by the bridges being destroyed, roads obstructed, 
and an utterly unprepared state of defence. It had 
taken several days to assemble volunteers and start in 
pursuit. Some of the Commands rode for a fortnight 
with only four hours' rest in the twenty-four. One 
hundred miles were sometimes covered in thirty hours 
by the fugitives. The inhabitants on the last stretch of 
the raid barricaded the highways to hinc'er their pro- 
gress. There was no hesitancy among the war recruits 
in meeting the foe, when they could overtake them. 

General Morgan's hotly pursued forces were over- 
taken in the valley near Buffington Island, where 
they were waiting for the dawn to clear the fog, so 
that they might cross the Ohio Piver at the ford and 
escape into West Virginia. The Federal troop came 
into the valley on the rear of the raiders; and fresh 
re-enforcements landing from the steamboats on the 
river, approached about the same time. All hope 
for escape, by fording the shallow place in the Ohio 
vv^as gone. The one desperate chance was by the 
road leading out of the upper end of the valley; and 
toward this outlet Morgan's confused troopers swept 
through the standing grain fields of the fertile farms, 




Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument. 

' And the answer came : ' We would build it 

Out of our hopes made sure, 
And out of our purest prayers and tears, 

And out of our faith secure." 



'And see that ye build it stately, 

In pillar and niche and gate, 
And high in pose as the souls of those 
It would commemorate. " 

James Whitcomb Riley. 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 321 

the Federals following in hot pursuit. Immediately 
after the stampede began, said one of the Union 
officers who was present, each one of Morgan's troopers 
began to unload the plunder carried on his horse. 
Boots, shoes, stockings, corsets, gloves, skates, sleigh- 
bells, bird cages, were scattered to the winds. Then 
the flying horsemen let loose their bolts of muslin 
and calico, holding one end, and each cavalryman 
let the whole hundred yards stream out behind him. 
Instantly we found ourselves to be rainbow chasers. 
No road could accommodate such a confused mass of 
flying horsemen, and they spread across the valley. 
In the gorge and on the hills beyond many were 
captured. Here the Indiana-Ohio raid practically 
ended although Morgan himself was not captured 
here, but, with a small part of his men, escaped and 
fled nearly to Lake Erie, being captured at New 
Lisbon. Colonel Allen tells of an amusing incident 
which happened with his detail of prisoners, im- 
mediately after their capture, which illustrates the 
fraternal feeling which manifested itself numberless 
times during the Civil War. 

"The prisoners and guards rested for a few minutes 
on the river bank, all gazing wistfully at the water. It 
must be borne in mind that both Morgan's and Hobson's 
command had been in the saddle for about three weeks, 
during all of which time we had ridden in the clouds of 
dust which our thousands of horses raised on the country 
roads in midsummer, and these dust clouds were so dense 
that at times it was impossible for the rider to see his 
horse's ears. It can readily be understood that under 
these circumstances a bath would be most desirable. 

"As we sat on the river bank, first one man, then an- 
other, asked permission to go to the water's edge and 
wash his face, till soon about one-half of the men, both 



32 2 Historic Indiana 

Union and Confederates, were at the river's edge washing 
their faces and digging dust out of their eyes, ears, and 
nostrils. This proved to be such a half-way sort of busi- 
ness, and so unsatisfactory, that the men asked permission 
to go in swimming. Recognizing the merit of this request, 
I gave permission for one-half the prisoners and one-half 
the guards to go in swimming together, the other half to 
stand by and take their turn. Soon both 'Yankees' and 
'Johnnies' were splashing in the water together, enjoying 
the most necessary bath they ever had in all their lives. 
The first detachment having completed their scrubbing, 
the second detachment took their turn. While the men 
were bathing, one of the Confederate officers turned to 
me, and pointing to the naked soldiers in the water said, 
'It is difficult to tell t'other from which.' I quickly agreed 
with him as I was at that moment debating in my mind 
whether there was any danger of 'getting the babies 
mixed,' but a glance at the line of men in dusty blue on 
the shore with their Spencer carbines reassured me and I 
permitted the boys to gambol in the water to their heart's 
content. 

"After the baths the guards shared the fried chicken 
in their haversacks with the prisoners, and we spread 
ourselves out on the grass under the shade of the trees, 
in regular picnic fashion, resting and waiting for orders." ^ 

During the raid General Morgan's losses in killed 
and wounded were two hundred and fifty men, and 
twenty-eight commissioned officers killed and thirty- 
five wounded. The loss on the Union side was two 
hundred killed and three hundred wounded. The raid 
had lasted but a few days, leaving a blackened, devas- 
tated trail across the summer landscape and across 
the hearts of loving friends North and South whose 

1 Allen, Col. T. F., "AThousand-Mile Horse Race," Trottwood's 
Monthly, 1907. 



Indiana as Affected by the Civil War 323 

dear ones fell in the fight for the invasion of the enemy's 
country or the defence and protection of their homes. 

After this invasion, the men of Indiana who were 
called out for the little brush, as the raiders called 
it, returned to their homes and the Governor directed 
a more permanent and effective organization of the 
militia, especially along the Ohio River. There, bus- 
iness places were to be closed after three o'clock, so 
that able-bodied citizens might meet and drill, for 
not less than two hours each day, to be prepared for 
any further raid. 

It seems strange that in this late war the question 
of navigation on the Mississippi River should again 
come up, after a quietude of sixty years, but it cer- 
tainly w^as a disturbing feature in 1864. The sympa- 
thizers w4th the South, living in the Northwest, had 
encouraged the emissaries from the South to think 
that those States might join with the Confederacy. 
Overtures to this effect had passed between them. 
The control of the mouth of the Mississippi River was 
in the hands of the Confederates. Railroads were 
not yet universal and this was used by the disaffected 
element as an argument that the interests of the 
Northwest were identified with those of the South. 
Governor Morton recognized this influence on political 
opinion in Indiana and the conquest of the Mississippi 
became, in his eyes, a matter of supreme importance. 
This conquest was accomplished by Grant's campaign 
at Vicksburg, and the ultimate extinction of the Con- 
federate control of the Mississippi. The gaining con- 
trol of that highway of commerce, the banishment of 
Morgan's raiders, and the breaking up of the treason- 
able organization of Sons of Liberty were the closing 
scenes of the drama of internal dissensions in Indiana. 



324 Historic Indiana 

The war was prosecuted to its close beyond the borders 
of the State. The remainder of the struggle meant a 
consuming anxiety on the part of those who awaited 
tidings of battle, the sorrow for lost ones, the prayers 
for the absent, and the joys of victory. When peace 
was declared in June, 1865, the Indiana boys in blue 
began returning to Indianapolis to be mustered out 
of service. Loving parents and wives came up to 
the capital to welcome them home. The clouds of 
war were lifted and bells rang out in jubilee over the 
return of peace. As the long lines of soldiers marched 
up the streets, tears of joy and shouts of pride greeted 
the battered battle flags; but always, among the 
throng, silent and pathetic in their black robes of 
woe, were they who mourned for their loved ones 
who never would return. "Deaf to the welcoming 
shouts, blind to the rejoicing crowd, they saw shad- 
owy figures following the flag, and dim faces that 
would smile no more." The living were welcomed 
home with universal joy, the dead were remembered 
with unspeakable sorrow. But the sorrow was in- 
dividual; the joy was general, for the country was 
saved! — the country that above all others was the 
hope, and is the hope, of the world. No more South, 
no more North, no more bickering about slavery. 
An undivided country, and in time a united country. 
In a third of a century the scars of dissension had 
healed even in Indiana. 



CHAPTER XV 

PICTURESQUE INDIANA 

TO the traveller who sees Indiana from the car 
window only, the State may seem uninteresting. 
Railways run along the lines of least resistance 
and through the most productive but not the most 
picturesque regions, and the endless stretches of wav- 
ing com grow monotonous to the tourist ; but there is 
another point of view. Should you journey about 
the state with a naturalist, in each neighborhood you 
would find attractive places worthy of a special excur- 
sion. There is natural beauty of scenery hidden away 
in many sequestered spots only short drives from the 
main line of travel. There is hardly a spot in the 
State, says Mr. Nicholson, that touches the imagi- 
nation with a sense of power or grandeur, and yet there 
are countless scenes of quiet beauty. The early 
writers of Indiana all sang of the beauty of forest 
and stream, of the birds and flowers that surrounded 
them. 

In the northern tier of counties, toward Lake Mich- 
igan, or bordering on the sinuous Kankakee, over a 
thousand little lakes are nestled among the farms of 
that region. For many years sportsmen and summer 
tourists, from far and near, have frequented these 
waters for pleasure and sport. Vast herds of wild 

325 



o 



26 Historic Indiana 



game and birds, and shoals of fish, have been taken 
from these haunts. 

The topography of the middle and southern coun- 
ties differs from the lake districts, and there are many 
picturesque places along the watercourses of these 
sections. The rivers of Indiana have ceased to be 
used for commerce, since railroads usurped trans- 
portation, but a boating trip on any of the beautiful 
streams repays one during a summer holiday. Along 
their banks the enormous soft maples, elms, and 
sycamores stand like giant sentinels white and far 
reaching, casting long afternoon shadows over the shal- 
low waters. In no other way can one realize the 
wild beauty of the Tippecanoe, the Mississinewa, 
the Whitewater, the Wabash, or the countless small 
creeks and streams which flow into that river and 
the Ohio. The English cover the placid Thames with 
pleasure craft, and write verses to the gentle stream 
that they prize so dearly; but the Hoosiers have a 
world of sylvan beauty lying within their domain 
unexplored, save by the immediate neighborhood 
people. There are no less than a hundred and thirty 
named creeks flowing into the twelve rivers of Indi- 
ana; besides many smaller streams which feed these 
creeks. All of these waters, somewhere in their course, 
flow through picturesque ravines, and gorges hung 
with vines and ferns. Wild flowers cluster along the 
banks and, as has been pictured, all about the splen- 
did elm trees stand, and stately green thorn trees fling 
their delicate fern-like foliage athwart the gray and 
white spotted boles of the tall leaning sycamores. 
Many of these streams rush along stony rapids, and 
plunge over cliffs, making waterfalls imposing in their 
grandeur. The banks are miniature canyons, which 



Picturesque Indiana 327 

astonish one who approaches them from the level 
farms above. 

"A hidden host of chiming springs 
Like countless harps with silver strings 

Are singing songs eternal. 
Like clustered chords of sweeping sound 

Adown the pebbly ledges 
The loosened waters laugh and bound 

To splash the swaying sedges." ^ 

These living springs were known and frequented by 
the Indians, when the wilderness w^as theirs. Around 
the sparkling pools were the trading-points where 
groups of red men and white traders met to barter skins 
of fur-bearing animals for ammunition and trinkets. 
The aborigines are gone from their old haunts, but 
the beautiful springs of water still flow for the traveller. 
An old settler revisits his native State and rejoices that 
now as of old the banks of the Wabash are lined with 
the richest verdure, wild flowers intermingle with the 
tall grass. Blossoms of wild plum, hawthorn, dogwood, 
and red-bud make the air redolent with their familiar 
perfume. The prairies, rich beyond belief, for which 
the speech of England has no name — gardens of the 
desert — the unshorn fields, are still boundless and 
beautiful. 

Some of the beauty of southern Indiana clusters 
about the entrances to numerous caves, to be found 
in a half-dozen counties in the limestone area. Here 
numberless sink-holes occur; through the fissures of 
many of them, adventurers have penetrated into the 
underground caverns beneath. Doubtless there are 
undiscovered caves throughout that region ; some that 

' Stein, Evaleen, Fugitive Pieces. 







28 Historic Indiana 



are known are unexplored. The entrances to some 
of the larger caves are wildly beautiful. The rugged 
vine- wreathed approaches to their mysterious cav- 
ernous depths are framed in a jungle of evergreens 
and ferns. Of the picturesque opening into Porter's 
cave in Owen County, which makes it, alone, reason 
for a pilgrimage to the place, the State geologist says 
that it is the most beautiful of any that he has visited 
in his journeys through the State. It is in the side 
of a hill at the head of a narrow^ canyon, which has 
been eroded by the stream which flows from the 
cavern. This stream falls perpendicularly thirty feet 
from the floor of the cave to the bottom of the gulch. 
"The rock down which the water flows is covered 
with moss, and in the early mom, when the sunbeams 
light up the interior of the cave for a distance of 
seventy-five or more feet and the waters glisten and 
sparkle from the background, the scene is a most 
entrancing one." ^ This cave may be traversed eight 
or nine hundred feet. The entrance to Shawnee cave, 
located in Lawrence County, is also surrounded by 
scenery of marvellous beauty. In Crawford County, 
among the rugged hills between the Ohio and Blue 
rivers, are Marengo and Wyandotte caves, which are 
natural caverns of immense dimensions; the latter 
second only to Mammoth cave in extent and beauty. 
Marengo was discovered in 1883, is nearly four thou- 
sand feet in extent, and is noted, as also is Shiloh 
cave, for the number and brilliancy of the interior 
chambers, glittering with myriads of beautiful stalac- 
tites. Wyandotte may have been the resort of the 
natives during the stone age, and was well known 

' Blatchley, W. S., Gleanings from Nature, page 105. Indianap- 
olis, 1899. 



Picturesque Indiana 329 

to the later Indians, who used some of the large dry 
chambers in which to store their seed corn. The 
vaulted domes and great apartments, vast in size and 
colossal in height, its fluted columns supporting the 
arched roof, give the interior the appearance of an 
immense cathedral. It contains large deposits of 
satin-spar, nitre, epsom salts, and plaster of paris. 
The running streams and dry tortuous paths, the 
enormous stalactites and stalagmites, crystal and 
glittering, sometimes reaching seventy feet in cir- 
cumference, make scenes of wondrous beauty quite 
unsuspected from the surface above. A description 
of one of the Indiana caves would not answer for all. 
They vary in extent, in the loftiness of their interiors, 
and in brilliancy; but in most of them, we are told, 
the roof and sides of the chambers are studded 
with pendants of glittering water-tipped carbonate 
of lime, that flash in the light of a torch like jewels 
of crystal. As with many other things in Indiana 
the caves have not been exploited and advertised to 
attract tourists. 

The mineral springs of Orange, Martin, Morgan, 
Warren, Owen, and other counties of Indiana are well 
worth a journey for the enjoyment of their environ- 
ment. These "licks " were well known to the Indians, 
and the w^aters have long been regarded as valuable 
for their medicinal qualities. Indeed, as cures, the 
Indiana springs are only on the threshold of their 
history; they are steadily becoming celebrated spas. 

The Switzerland of Indiana is in the country along 
the Ohio River. In that part of the State the scenery 
is, in many localities, wildly beautiful. The drives 
and walks about Madison, Hanover College, Vevay, 
and other southern towns are unsurpassed in the 



330 Historic Indiana 

Middle West. In all of these counties, there are 
picturesque retreats worth a journey to see them. 

Among the pleasures of driving in different parts 
of the State, is the coming upon the old mills which 
were such an essential feature of the early settlement. 
Many of these old buildings still stand between the 
placid mill-race and the necessary stream, which winds 
about through the hills, and is crossed by the pictur- 
esque bridges. These old mills are tucked away in 
the valleys, or hang over the falls, where one comes 
upon them unexpectedly at a turn in the road. They 
are set amidst the most charming scenery, making 
one long to stop and stay through the golden October 
days. Nowhere else may the beauty and gorgeousness 
of the forest trees in their autumn foliage be so in- 
timately known and enjoyed, as around these old 
mill sites. Here the stream makes its tortuous wind- 
ings, past steep bluffs and sloping banks, covered with 
primeval oaks, maples, and walnut trees, clothed in 
their scarlet and gold. To the busy man who has 
known these nooks in childhood days, there is no 
greater joy than to return from life's round of cares 
and renew his youth in the old valley. The mystical 
haze of autumn mellows the brilliant sunshine and 
gaudy coloring of the foliage. The squirrel still scolds 
him, as in days of yore, for gathering the nuts on his 
preserves. He browses on the wild grapes and black 
haws, and thinks with Mr. Howells who recalled years 
afterward in historic old Venice, when he heard the 
market boy cry his wares 'neath the Rialto Bridge, 

" ' Mulberries! fine mulberries here.' " 
Though I hardly should count these mulberries dear 
If I paid three times the price for my pleasure. 




The Clifty Falls, near Madison, Indiana. 



Picturesque Indiana 331 

For you know, old friend, I haven't eaten 

A mulberry, since the ignorant joy 
Of anything sweet in the mouth could sweeten 

All this bitter world for a boy." ^ 

Native Hoosiers love their woods and wild flowers 
and gentle streams, as the old salt loves the sea. 
None of Whitcomb Riley's poems express the feelings 
of his people more truly than do the verses about 
the banks of the creeks, the fields and farms, and 
the old swimming-hole. Evaleen Stein — who is pre- 
eminently the Hoosier poet of the green meadows, the 
grassy road-sides, the shimmering streams, the mys- 
terious marshes, the beautiful birds and the dim 
forests which she claims as "the sweet familiar things 
of the ever dearest home-lands," voices the feelings 
of the true Indianian, in the next line, "I think those 
fields are fairer than any anywhere." ^ 

From any one of the towns it is not far to the woods, 
and it has always been part of the life of the children 
to wander forth on holdiays and get into the real 
country; gathering wild flowers or nuts, as the season 
happens to afford ; exploring the old rail fence comers, 
where the wild cherry and the elder bushes grow, 
where the ground-cherries and the sassafras are found, 
under the wild-rose tangle; and a boy may be sure of 
arousing a rabbit or a Bob-white. Sitting on the old 
worm-fence, watching the wrens and thrushes flitting 
in and out, intent on family cares, many a Hoosier 
youth has planned the career that he determined, 
then, should be his. Many a comely maiden has 
dreamed of the future awaiting her, as she filled her 
basket with blackberries, where the vines had clam- 

» Howells, Wm. D., Poems. 

2 Stein, Evaleen, Among the Trees Again. Indianapolis, 1902. 



332 Historic Indiana 

bered over the old "stake and riders." This home 
of the golden-rod and sumach is fast passing from 
the roadsides; but the picturesque fences, with their 
neglected comers of lovely wild things, will live in 
the memory of the native of the West. It is the same 
with the great forests, and the love they inspire in the 
Hoosier breast: as Miss Dunn felt marooned in a 
bleak prairie town she fell to dreaming of an Indiana 
woodland, musical with birds and the singing of a peb- 
bly brook ; arrow-grass edged the bank ; yellow, w^axen 
buttercups gleamed near. A great mottled sycamore 
leaned over a deep pool splendid with shiners. Some 
frogs croaked farther down the bank, and opposite, 
a billow of ferns were reflected daintily on the surface. 
Some magnificent beeches and splendid oaks, on a 
little knoll beyond, threw deep shadows that called 
to comfort on the mossy beds and leafy carpets of 
the natural groves of old Indiana. It is the beauty 
of these woodland scenes that looks forth from the 
canvases of artists like Bundy, and there is little 
wonder that the impression of the forests and fields 
is present in the writings of Hoosiers. Surely nowhere 
outside of the tropics was there a greater profusion 
of wild flowers, ferns, and trees than on the hills and 
valleys and over the plains of this State. The mag- 
nificence of the primeval forests of Indiana is a matter 
of history. The present "dweller in the land " cannot 
fully realize their vastness, well wooded as it still 
may seem to them. 

As the State slopes toward Lake Michigan the 
forests grow light, until there are only straggling 
oaks, and undergrowth; but other beauties of nature 
compensate here for the products of a more fertile 
soil. It is a peculiar country, — a succession of shel- 




One of the Gorges of Montgomery County. 



Picturesque Indiana s^s 

tered prairies, rounded sand hills and reedy marshes, 
interspersed with quiet lakes and by a net-work of 
sluggish streams. The lakes in northern Indiana, 
writes Mr. Blatchley, are the brightest gems in the 
corona of the State. They are the most beautiful 
and expressive features of the landscape, in the region 
wherein they abound. Numbered by hundreds, they 
range in size from an area of half an acre up to five 
and a half square miles. The whole number of these 
pretty lakes cannot be less than one thousand. They 
were caused by glacial action and are scattered over 
the fourteen or fifteen northern counties. Their depth 
varies in different localities from five to one hun- 
dred and twenty feet. Many of these charming lakes 
have groups of cottages, hotels, and club-houses around 
their shores. Some are still without settlements. On 
their banks, adds Mr. Blatchley, one can pitch his 
tent with no fear of invading the privacy of some 
cottage. Over its deeper pools he can troll or cast 
for black bass, with the assurance that he will cause 
that gamy denizen to rise and strike, or alongside 
the weed-covered bars he can at times pull in blue- 
gill, catfish, ringed perch, and warmouth as fast as he 
can bait his hooks. Still farther in the northwestern 
part of the State, the swamps that are tributary to 
the Kankakee River, covered half a million acres 
before the modern scheme of drainage was begun. 
These swamps have been the paradise of the sports- 
man, and are still visited by hundreds of hunters 
in the duck-shooting season. Most of the hunting 
is done in boats poled along in the current, or pushed 
about among the reeds. If approached from the 
plain, the huntsman is in danger of losing his way 
in the interminable swamp, or of getting in beyond 



334 Historic Indiana 

his depth, in the soft ooze of the marsh. It is a weird 
landscape of vast stretches of land, covered with 
tall grass and prairie flowers, almost impenetrable 
because the soil is like a sponge. Through this great 
area of lowland the beautiftd little river bends about 
as it winds its slender way through the wide marsh. 
A river is known to be there, writes Mr, Ball — the 
blue lines of trees marking its course can be discerned 
from the prairie heights; but only occasionally in 
mid-winter or in a time of great drought can one come 
near its water channel. So far as any ordinary access 
to it from Lake County is concerned, it is like a fab- 
ulous river, or one the existence of which we take on 
trust. 

"Ah, surely one would never guess 
That through that tangled wilderness, 
Through those far forest depths remote, 
Lay any smallest path, much less 
A way wherein to guide a boat." ^ 

The banks of the river itself are bordered by beautiful 
trees, hung with vines and filled with singing birds. 
Floating dreamily down the sluggish stream, imder 
the depths of its summer shade the idle angler looks 
through the trees and across the marsh, and recalls 
Evaleen Stein's beautiful description of the scene: 

"And now and then a wild bird flies 

From hidden haunts among the reeds; 
Or, faintly heard, a bittern cries 

Across the tasselled water- weeds ; 
Or floating upward from the green 
Young willow wands, with sunny sheen 
On pearly breast, and wings outspread, 
A white crane journeys overhead. 

» Stein, Evaleen, One Way to the Woods, page 21. Boston, 1898. 



Picturesque Indiana 335 

For leagues on leagues no sign is there 

Of any snare 
For human toil, nor grief nor care; 

The fields for bread lie other-where. 
Only the wild rice, straight and tall, 

The wild race waving over all." ^ 

The lover of solitude and sylvan joys may set his canoe 
on the shaded waters of the Mississinewa, or drop 
down the shallow sparkling Tippecanoe, or hunt the 
course of Lost River, for pleasures unalloyed by sound 
of trade. He may take a tramp over the rugged hills 
of Brown, or ramble along the route of the old canal, 
the while he recalls the vanished travellers who once 
glided past the woodland beauty that still borders 
the old towpath. If in search of the grandeur of 
nature, he may rove through the stretches of primeval 
forest in Montgomery County, misnamed the Shades 
of Death. There naught but a feeling of exultation 
in the mysterious beauty comes to the beholder ; may 
within the boundaries of his own State enjoy tranquil 
sojourns made interesting in the exploration of hidden 
nooks of untold beauty. He may renew his youth 
by long tramps through the fields of waving grain or 
under the shadows of great trees, where the singing 
of innumerable birds invites to joys undreamed of 
by the tourist who knows Indiana scenery only from 
the highways of travel. 

» Stein, Evaleen, One Way to the Woods — poem, "The Marshes.'.' 
Boston, 1898. 



CHAPTER XVI 

AN INDIANA TYPE 

A BIOGRAPHICAL sketch of a native Indianian, 
who was representative of a class of citizens 
in that State, is given here to show another 
element that entered into the settlement of the com- 
monwealth. The typical Hoosier of dialect stories is 
known to all. Among those who were bom amid the 
crude conditions of frontier life, there was another 
class of men and women. These people maintained 
the traditions of their ancestry amidst the rude sur- 
roundings and scarce educational advantages. They 
grew up in the wilderness, but became the public- 
spirited citizens who stood not only for law and order 
on the border, but for the gentle graces of social life, 
when the neighborhoods developed into villages and 
cities. 

The characteristics of this type of Americans, where- 
ever found, were the love of country and of religious 
liberty, a deep pervading sense of the priceless value 
of education and every means of culture; with the 
desire to establish equal opportunity for all. There 
was about them a true knightly quality of noblesse 
oblige. They were reformers without being visionary, 
for they were the active men of affairs. The frank 
manner, erect figure, sterling integrity, betokened the 

336 



An Indiana Type 337 

high-bred gentleman and decisive man of action. 
This type had representatives in every section. 

The number of these citizens in Indiana was not 
small, but even smallness of number never deterred 
such men and women from initiative in movements 
of progress toward their high ideal for the individual 
and the country. Unfettered by Old World conditions, 
they saw the opportunity of the New World, and 
each bore his personal part of the responsibilities. It 
was of such that Lowell said in his immortal ode 
concerning Lincoln : 

" For him her Old- World moulds aside she threw. 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 

Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new. 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
New birth of our new soil, the first American." 

Albert Henderson was one of this class who wrought 
without thought of rewards or honors. He was bom 
within the territory on the tenth of January, the year 
before it was admitted into the Union. His father 
was of Carolina Quaker stock; and his mother came 
of Southern blood, tracing their ancestry through 
colonial service back to Scotch-Irish distinction in 
past history. Albert Henderson embodied the elements 
of this combination of lineage, and showed it through- 
out his life. The Quaker grandparents had come to 
the new territory because of their convictions in 
opposition to slavery, but they were possessed of lands 
and chattels as that frugal people is apt to be. His 
mother's family had always owned slaves, but came 



^T,8 Historic Indiana 

away from their kindred and people for the same 
reason. Her forefather, Robert Orr, the founder of 
the American line, had served as a colonel in the 
Revolutionary War, with seven sons in the service, 
and the little grandson, who afterward emigrated to 
Indiana, was a powder-maker to the Carolina forces. 

In 1811, this branch of the family left South Car- 
olina with a party of relatives and neighbors, who had 
determined to cast in their lot with a free State. After 
the long journey over mountains and down the rivers, 
they settled in the Whitewater Valley. Here they 
took up tracts of fine forest lands, and here, a little 
later, one daughter married the Quaker John Hender- 
son, who had been suspended "from meeting" for 
serving in the War of 181 2, but whose family life, and 
training, continued in that simple faith. 

It was easy to trace the heritage of such antece- 
dents in the character and bearing of their son, Al- 
bert. His simple tastes, his courtly old-time manner, 
his ardent patriotism, his craving for knowledge, his 
own correct life, with its gentle tolerance of others' 
shortcomings, all told plainly of the combination of 
the proud Southern blood with the Quaker strain, 
and he was as attached to the one family history as 
to the other. 

Mr. Henderson's life may be considered as rep- 
resentative of the careers of those Western men who 
were his contemporaries. At sixteen years of age 
he was apprenticed, and learned to be a "master 
builder." He built many of the important buildings, 
and residences, in his part of the State. He drew his 
own plans and made the specifications. He moulded 
the brick in his own brick-yards, and burned the lime 
in his own lime-kilns. His own workmen reared the 




Albert Henderson. 



An Indiana Type 339 

walls, plastered the interior, and put on the carpenter's 
finish. Complete from "plans to occupancy" was his 
enterprising announcement. The construction was 
sound and meant to last. Many of those buildings 
are still standing, a monument to honest work. In 
later life he took up the stone and granite business, 
but at all times he was a farmer. The love of the soil, 
a passion for seeing things grow, a knowledge of rear- 
ing live stock, and the Anglo-Saxon wish for lands 
made him a persistent farmer, although he never lived 
on a farm after his childhood days. Covington, in 
Fountain County, was one of the rising river towns, 
before the railroad innovation, when Mr. Henderson 
settled there, and his early manhood was identified 
with that section, and he was a member of the first 
Town Council of Covington after its incorporation. 
There he married a wife from the Ristine family, who 
came into the State with the earliest settlers. Her 
useful life closed within a few years. 

Mr. Henderson was a man of indomitable energy, 
great initiative, and extremely enterprising for the 
times. Old settlers are fond of telling how he and 
his workmen built a house for a farmer near the 
Wabash while obliged to wait for the river to rise, so 
they could proceed on their journey to New Orleans 
with a flotilla of lime boats and lumber with which 
they had started to market. 

He was a man of commanding presence, and noble 
bearing, with the manners of the old time. He had a 
very keen sense of humor, without any of the buf- 
foonery of the border. While making no pretensions 
to oratory he was an excellent speaker and presid- 
ing officer, to which duty he was often called in his 
community. 



340 Historic Indiana 

In 1844, he married Lorana, the daughter of Dr. 
John Lambert Richmond, one of the pioneer surgeons 
of IndianapoHs. Dr. Richmond was a very original 
man, of great talent, and possessed a mind enriched 
by years of study and investigation. In this union 
of Southern and Northern families, on Indiana soil, 
the life of Mr. Henderson is again typical o^ the West. 
Lorana Richmond was of New England-New York 
parentage, and of English descent, with an historic 
ancestry from the days of the Conqueror to colonial 
settlement, and through Revolutionary service in 
Massachusetts and New York. The marriage was an 
ideal one, uniting two persons who had the same 
noble aspirations and aims in life. She was a woman 
of rare judgment, wide reading, conservative temper- 
ament, and graciously hospitable. The home which 
these young people set up was ever full of good cheer 
and hospitality. Visitors from far and near, relatives, 
pensioners, ministers, educators, and lecturers of note 
filled the house at different seasons and on various 
occasions. In the town, Albert Henderson and his 
helpmeet were always identified with the charities 
and philanthropic endeavors. By her kindly min- 
istrations, her baskets of food, and beautiful flowers, 
and the sheltering home offered in time of need or 
sorrow, his wife was as his other self in helpfulness in 
this community. 

In the church it was Deacon Henderson, and he 
was ever the "right-hand man" to the minister. 
Educational advantages for every child was his life 
maxim. He maintained a private school for his own 
family and the immediate neighborhood. While he 
was a young man, and before he had children of his 
own, the great struggle for free public schools through- 



An Indiana Type 341 

out the State came up, and Mr. Henderson was one 
of the staunchest supporters of Caleb Mills and his 
coterie of helpers, in their long agitation for enact- 
ments to further universal education. These friends 
of free schools, in his district, called conventions, and 
organized a circuit of county meetings, over which he 
presided and which he also addressed. This group 
of men won their victory with the adoption of the new 
State Constitution in 185 1, and continued to agitate 
for increased facilities. 

In the early days the use of alcoholic drinks in the 
West w^as very general and was clearly leading into 
widespread drunkenness, most threateningly disastrous 
it seemed to the minds of temperate citizens. From 
this foreboding sprang the "Washingtonian movement," 
which swept the country. Mr. Henderson cast his 
influence with the movement and, being a staunch 
teetotaler during his life, always co-operated fearlessly 
with the temperance w^ork. 

Covington was a very thriving town in those days, 
with the lively commerce of the new canal and river, 
and far eclipsed the capital of the State in business 
prospects. In the village there was a brilliant coterie 
of young men, who had settled there because of the 
flattering business outlook. Many of them became 
famous afterwards in State and national politics. 
Such men as Senator Edward Hannegan, Judge Ristine, 
Daniel Voorhees, David Briar, Daniel Mace, and Lew 
Wallace resided in the town, with many others equally 
honorable, but who attained less fame. Mr. Henderson 
was associated with these men in a lyceum and 
literary club, with the object of sharpening their 
own wits, in tilts against each other, and for the 
purpose of bringing noted lecturers to the town for 



342 Historic Indiana 

the benefit of the general pubHc, and to sustain a 
town library. Like other pioneers he was deprived 
of early advantages, except for the winter term of the 
district school, but he never lost a moment's oppor- 
tunity to improve himself. He kept up his studies 
until long past middle life; poring over books of 
history, biography, travel, mathematics, philosophy, 
and science, making his own crude experiments in 
physics and chemistry by improvised methods, like 
Isaac Watts with his teakettle. He was up before 
daylight, for the real study was during the morning 
hour. His children never remember having seen him 
abed, in all their earlier years. The training which 
this kind of thoughtful struggle for knowledge gave 
him was a thoroughness of education seldom attained 
in the schools. As was said of another, ' ' he himself 
disclaimed credit for being what is called a self-made 
man. It is true that he had his own way to make, 
but he began with all the benefits of good ancestry, 
and he was, in his phrase, born into an intellectual 
atmosphere." His family on both sides had cared 
for the things of the spirit, and for learning. Their 
advantages were only those. of the frontier, but the 
love of nature and of books was their continuous 
heritage in each generation. 

There was something almost pathetic in the quench- 
less thirst for learning and vast respect for education 
which this man and others of his type had throughout 
life. Judge Darrow says of his own father, in his 
great solicitude for the education of his children: "I 
could not know why my father took all this trouble 
for me to learn my Latin grammar, but I know to-day. 
I know that it was the blind persistent effort of the 
parent to resurrect his own buried hopes in the greater 



An Indiana Type 343 

opportunities and broader life that he would give his 
child." 

The early and continued care of others hampered 
Mr. Henderson's personal undertakings. Throughout 
life, he kept his own ambitions within possible attain- 
ment, consistent with his duties to those in his care; 
but for his children and his wards, his own sacrifices 
made it possible for them to have advantages that 
he had missed. He carried his youngest brother and 
five other youths in a wagon, overland, to Franklin 
College, and installed them there for their " schooling," 
the best to be had in that day. For many years he 
contributed to this school, and was a member of the 
Board of Trustees until his death. 

Like many of the pioneer boys brought up in the 
country, he had a knowledge of trees and woodcraft, 
all sorts of wise intimacies with nature, a practical 
knowledge of live stock and crops, which made him 
a successful farmer, although an "absentee." He had 
a genuine love of the soil and all growing things. 
Until, his last days he took great pleasure in making 
children acquainted with trees and shrubs, with the 
flavor of wild strawberries and the tang of the wild 
grapes. To take a group of little ones to the w^oods 
for a nutting expedition, or for spring flowers, to show 
them where to find paw-paws and his favorite black 
haws, to let them wade in the creek, and learn the 
habits of birds — all this was a perennial source of joy 
to him and to them. He could not bear to have them 
grow up without the close contact with nature which 
had been the joy of his youth. 

Next to his care for his father's and afterwards 
his own family, and wards, Mr. Henderson took a 
most vital interest in civic and state affairs and was 



344 Historic Indiana 

a man who made known his convictions by his efforts 
to better things always. He exerted his energies to 
influence others, who were bound by narrow views, 
prejudices, and indifference in educational and civic 
affairs. He was of Southern family and their dislike 
of slavery, which had impelled them to leave that 
environment, and journey to free soil, had descended 
to him; but in early life he w^as a Democrat in pol- 
itics. The struggle over the extension of slavery" was 
approaching. His father-in-law, Dr. Richmond, who 
had retired from his medical practice at Indianapolis, 
and was living with him, was an ardent colonizationist, 
and a member of the circle who carried on the ' ' under- 
ground railway." He w^ould often say, after reading 
the discussions in Congress, "I shall not live to see it, 
but the storm will be upon us soon." It came within 
a half-dozen years. Together, the old and the young 
man discerned the cloud that w^as settling over the 
nation. In the new alignment of forces, those Dem- 
ocrats who regarded slavery with horror joined the 
new Republican party, as did Governor Morton and 
many leaders of men. Sorrowfully Mr. Henderson 
left the party of his youth, and voted w^ith the new 
one looking towards the abolition of slavery. By 
this time national events moved rapidly towards the 
crisis of '6i, and the future confirmed him in the stand 
he had taken. 

From the time Sumter was fired upon, through 
all the years of that sad war, Mr. Henderson, with 
the men and women who held to the staunch principles 
of universal rights, saw troublous times in Indiana. 
These men who held for the Union were the strength 
and support of their great war governor. They were 
tireless in their efforts to uphold his hands and give 



An Indiana Type 345 

him the encouragement he so much needed. These 
citizens gave their personal services, forwarded sup- 
pHes, donated quantities of food, clothing, delicacies 
for the sick, books, and hospital necessities. Every 
passing regiment on its way to the war was fed ; and 
men went to the front to bring back the wounded to 
be cared for at home. The largest part of this labor 
of love was done at the capital, but every county and 
town constantly contributed men, women, and funds 
for the work. In the central and southern districts 
of Indiana many of the people were of Southern ex- 
traction, and, naturally perhaps, sided with the South. 
Loyal men, who had been lifelong Democrats, like 
Mr. Henderson, now devoted much of their energies 
towards reclaiming this element to loyalty. Knowing 
many of them personall^^, their family history, and 
their previous record, he went to scores of them during 
the darkest days of the war, trying to persuade them 
to see the right, denouncing their disloyalty and 
dispersing their mistaken following. Mr. Henderson, 
and the men of like convictions, would ride all night 
to disband a traitorous organization. No complete 
roll of honor has been kept of those noble men and 
women who helped the cause at home. Their name 
was legion. In every village, hamlet, and town, both 
North and South, the people who waited and watched 
at home worked and suffered for the firing line. Their 
reward had to be a consciousness of duty performed, 
as they could reach it ; and (in the North) the triumph 
of the cause they held to be just and right. The San- 
itary Commission aids, the hospital supply workers, 
sewing societies, and the men who quietly aided 
Governor Morton, were effective forces which he felt 
were backing him in the struggle at home and in the 



346 Historic Indiana 

field. Of this element were Albert Henderson and 
his wife. With their neighbors they spared neither 
labor, funds, nor time. This whole group of citizens 
devoted the years to continuous service for the troops 
and the cause. 

During the anxious war time, financial disaster 
had come to the subject of our sketch. Not from 
personal failure, but from "going surety for others." 
It was before the day of bond companies, and every 
land-holder was apt to be asked to go on paper. As 
John Clay said in his father's biography, "one helped 
another, and this man backed many a worthless note. 
He took his losses good-naturedly and the friendship 
continued." So with Albert Henderson — it was his 
one vice. He was always helping some one else to 
his own inconvenience, and the failing he never over- 
came. In the sixties it caused the crowning regret 
of his life. He had sacrificed the accumulated property 
of years of labor to cancel these security accounts, 
and in justice to those dependent upon him, he could 
not enlist in the army. Not to go to the front during 
the war caused his patriotic heart many sorrowful 
and weary nights. Because of these losses he declined 
to represent his district in Congress, saying that if 
he could leave home it must be for the "line of battle." 

Although faithful at the primaries, and conscientious 
about his ballot, he never held political office. Near 
the close of the war, after paying his large indebted- 
ness, and readjusting his financial affairs, he moved 
to Lafayette and henceforth his life was passed in 
that community, where he and his wife started anew 
in life with limited means, but with the same ideals 
and earnest purposes. They went on performing 
the duties of the hour as the days brought them forth. 



An Indiana Type 347 

The hopefulness of their youthful start in life could 
not be repeated; but the years that followed were 
years of usefulness and full of quiet pleasures, of 
books, of friendships, and family life. 

Mr. Henderson's interest in civic affairs, in edu- 
cational movements, and public questions continued 
unabated during life, and he was always abreast of 
the times. Besides many benefactions, he was a 
"building and loan association" to all of his steadily 
employed workmen. By his accommodation and 
foresight for them, they all built homes for themselves. 

When Mr. Henderson was over seventy years of 
age he wrote: "I have enjoyed my reveries of silent 
planning for the wrong-doer, for the homeless, and 
the enforced idleness of those who say, 'because no 
man hath hired us ' ; in planning for co-operative 
labor, as a cure for the cry against monopolies and 
capital, and sometimes in directing spiritual work. 
But having no time to spare, and not being inclined 
to leadership, I have tried to content myself by advis- 
ing individuals as they come in my way ; starting and 
encouraging young people to qualify for business, by 
a word, or the small loan of means for a beginning." 
This "small loan of means" meant a hearthstone and 
home for many an employee. 

Mr. Henderson was for a number of years president 
of the Tippecanoe Fair Association and took an active 
part in the development of farming and live-stock 
interests. 

During the last years of his life a rash young clergy- 
man, with the instincts of a pope, proposed to the 
congregation of the Baptist church, of which Mr. 
Henderson was a member, that they adopt a written 
€reed; which was thereupon produced. The " church 



348 Historic Indiana 

meeting" had taken it up and were discussing the 
proposition, to which Mr. Henderson Hstened until 
all were through, and the young minister asked, "Are 
you ready for the question ? " Here Deacon Hender- 
son, for whose opinions all had such respect, arose 
and gravely said: 

"My young brother and friends, in these days when 
the whole religious world is 'groaning and travailling 
in pain* trying to rend asunder the bands of their 
creeds, which are their heritage of the past, and an 
incubus to their present life and growth, it impresses 
me as a very dangerous and unnecessary proceeding 
for a congregation in a denomination which has always 
boasted freedom from any creed, save the New Testa- 
ment, to foist upon itself and load itself down with 
one, at this late day. Brethren, I move that the 
proposition be laid upon the table, and that we adjourn 
with the singing of ' Praise God from whom all blessings 
flow.'" In which all joined, and went out wiser and 
better for his clear vision and foresight. 

At the last week-night meeting of the church that 
he was ever able to attend, he arose and spoke of 
"two articles which have come to my notice during 
the last fortnight. One is the account in a current 
magazine of the great work being accomplished by 
the Salvation Army under General Booth and the 
vast good being done by that noble band, whose work 
at first was like our Saviour's, so 'despised and re- 
jected of men.' The other is a little book on charity, 
or love, written by Henry Drummond, and called 
The Greatest Thing in the World. I have not strength 
to comment on their usefulness to you, but I commend 
them to you for your careful and prayerful reading." 

In closing this sketch of the everyday career of a 



An Indiana Type 349 

representative Western man, who was a type of the 
best citizenship of Indiana, no tribute could have 
been especially written of Albert Henderson more 
fitting than the following words of Mr. Howells written 
about a man of similar character: 

"He had all the distinctive American interest in 
public affairs. He was in full sympathy with the 
best spirit of his time. His conscience was as sensitive 
to public wrongs and perilous tendencies as to private 
and personal conduct. He voted with strong con- 
victions and labored with tender love for all. It was 
a life beneficent to every other life that it touched, 
and of the most essential human worth, charm of 
character, and truest manhood. His admirable mind, 
the natural loftiness of his aims, his instinctive sym- 
pathy with every noble impulse and human endeavor, 
his fine intellectual grasp of every question, all made 
for him friends of the best men and women of his 
time and neighborhood." 



CHAPTER XVII 

LETTERS AND ART IN INDIANA 

THE prevalence of authorship in the Hoosier 
State has occasioned one of its prominent 
writers to remark that one is distinguished 
in Indiana if he has not appeared in print. Recognizing 
the fact of this phase in the development of Indiana's, 
people, no sketch of the State's growth would be 
complete without some notice of the manifestation 
of their interest in letters and the arts. 

When it is remembered that Hoosiers have hitherto 
been of necessity hewers of wood and drawers of 
water, that only within the last generation have they 
emerged from actual frontier conditions, it will be 
evident, to the most casual thinker, that there has 
been scant time for artistic development. Mr. Riley 
felt and expressed this when he said that our brief 
history as a nation, and our finding and founding 
and maintaining of it, left our forefathers little time, 
indeed, for the delicate cultivation of the arts and 
graces of refined and scholarly attainments. Their 
attention was absorbed looking toward the protection 
of their rude farmhouses and their meagre harvests 
from the dread invasion of the Indians. When William 
Coggeshall published his Anthology of Western poets 
in i860, he called attention to the short time which 

350 



Letters and Art in Indiana 351 

his collection of verses covered, and said that it had 
been a period significant for perilous wars, for hard 
work, for amazing enterprises; all of which furnished 
materials for literature, but, until the mellowing 
influences of time have long been hung over their 
history, repel poetry. Very few of these early singers 
made literature a profession. It has been noted that 
the poets of the West have been lawyers, doctors, 
teachers, preachers, mechanics, farmers, editors, 
printers, and housekeepers. They have written at 
intervals of leisure snatched from engrossing cares 
and exacting duties. Their story is touching. The 
author of Ben Hur had made his difficult way in the 
world as a lawyer, had fought gallantly in two wars, 
served as governor of a territory, and given much 
attention to politics, before he found time to complete 
his Tale of the Christ, begun so many years before. 
Maurice Thompson wrote his stories between times, 
while doing his work in the world as a soldier, civil 
engineer, and lawyer, Benjamin Parker was surprised 
that the personal experiences in his poems about 
The Log Cabin in the Clearing, and other pioneer 
scenes, had found readers to exhaust the first edition 
within sixty days. 

The material development and vast natural re- 
sources of the West have been exploited until, as an 
observer said, there is little wonder if the world has 
come to think of that section's ambition as bounded 
by acres and bushels and dollars. It is another kind 
of wealth and attainment that now arrests attention. 
In the individual expression of thought and fancy, 
on the canvas and in literature, Indiana is manifesting 
the effects of the dawn of more leisure for study, and 
what has been termed comparative freedom from 



352 Historic Indiana 

worry about crops and clients. It has been truly 
said that an era of business prosperity in the Middle 
West means a succeeding era of intellectual activity, 
more attention to higher education, more search for 
culture, and higher standards of intellectual ability. 

Mr. Maurice Thompson calls attention to the youth 
of the commonwealth, when comparing her production 
to those of older literary centres. He reminds us that 
Indiana was only eighty years a State when Old Glory 
was written, where New England was two hundred 
when Bryant produced Thanatopsis; that Ben Hur 
was given to the world less than a century after Clarke 
captured Vincennes in the howling wilderness. 

It is significant of the extent of the attempt at 
literary expression that a sufficient number of talented 
people could be assembled within the first half-century 
of its settlement to form so flourishing a society for 
the advancement of general culture as the Association 
of Western Writers. Mr. Hamilton has collected a 
full volume, giving only a page to each author, of the 
fugitive pieces of Indiana writers; making it seem 
that the State had sprung full-handed from pioneer 
conditions into literary work. Remembering, then, 
the newness of habitation and the dearth of advantages 
for culture and instruction in art, the world is prepared 
to forgive any lack of constructive skill, of delicacy 
of style, of notable development of character, and 
of extraordinary literary achievement. 

A poem published in 1787 lays claim to being the 
first Indiana production, and by the early date of 
1827 a writer acknowledged that "we are a scribbling 
and forth-putting people." The most noticeable 
characteristic of the earliest writers in Indiana is their 
response to the charms of nature lying all about them. 




Ck 



m 



a 

CO 






Letters and Art in Indiana 353 

In William Coggeshall's collection, he assembles 
twenty-three writers of poetry, from the earliest 
Indiana scribblers. Their verses are full of the love 
of nature and of sentiment — many of them sentimental. 
They are idyllic songs of the forest home and experi- 
ences of frontier life. The rhetoric is rosy and they 
indulge in rhapsodical flights. Their chief claim on 
our interest is the reflection of the times in which 
they were written. The spell cast on poetic souls by 
forest and stream breathes through all of them. In 
the "Poet's Comer" of the newspapers of the time, 
in the Ladies' Repository, in the Literary Messenger, 
or in Mr. Prentice's encouraging columns, these poets 
presented their songs to the Western world. One 
wrote of how she 

" Loved the thoughtful hour when sinks 
The burning sun to rest. 
And spreads a sea of flowing gold 
Along the illumined west." 

A poet then very famous pictured the setting for 
her story, out 

" In a green meadow, laced by a silvery stream. 
Where the lilies all day seem to float in a dream 
On the soft gurgling waves in their bright pebbled bed. 
Where the emerald turf springs up light from the tread." 

Another poet, in time of grief, expressed the wish 
that the fair loved one might be buried 

"In the vale where the willow and cypress weep; 
Where the wind of the West breathes its softest sigh ; 
Where the silvery stream is flowing nigh." 

Sarah T. Bolton, who was one of these pioneer writers 
that lived on into the nineties, voices this feeling of 
response to their environment, in the lines: 



354 Historic Indiana 

" I learned to sing in nature's solitude, 

Among the free wild birds and antlered deer; 
In the primeval forest and the rude 
Log cabin of the Western pioneer. 

" They loved the whisper of the leaves, the breeze, 
The scent of rivulets, the trill of birds, 
And my poor songs were echoes caught from these 
Voices of Nature set to rhythmic words." 

In the later collection of Poets and Poetry of Indiana, 
made by Benjamin Parker and E. Hiney, we find 
that they have included one hundred and forty-six 
writers of verse, and the same pleasure in the fields, 
flowers, and forests is shown in all of the selections. 
Many of these poets are now known only by being 
preserved in these collections, but, like the local 
painters of those times, they were the pride of their 
village, in their day. 

In the earliest times, when there were fewer period- 
icals and books published, oratory, in the most pon- 
derous and lofty style, and the addresses framed in 
sonorous periods with soaring flights of eloquence, 
beyond what would be acceptable now, took the place 
of printed composition. The oration had then a 
real literary influence. In this form of expression 
Indiana has always occupied a position of prominence. 
Her public men have enjoyed a national reputation 
for eloquence, both at the bar and in political life. 

Another form of writing, among the very earliest 
publications which emanated from the State, were 
the contributions of the group of scientific men in 
the New Harmony community, mentioned elsewhere. 

The collections of William Coggeshall, of Benjamin 
Parker and E. Hiney, coupled with Meredith Nichol- 



Letters and Art in Indiana 355 

son's very interesting book on the literary performances 
of Indiana, entitled Hoosiers, makes any detailed 
mention of particular writers and their books un- 
necessary, except as illustrating the development of 
authorship within the State. Continuing to be a 
"scribbling and forth-putting people," so many authors 
have appeared that Wilbur Nesbit facetiously declared 
at the Sons of Indiana dinner in Chicago that "envious 
outsiders look up from their Hoosier books long 
enough to speak satirically of Indiana as the literary 
belt. They mention the dialect-poetry regions, and 
the historical-novel districts, and the counties wherein 
the ballad and rondeau flourish with the prodigality 
of commerce. They have even prepared maps showing 
by means of shaded and unshaded portions where 
the traveller must strike in order to find or avoid 
certain brands of literature," 

It has been said that none of the literary work yet 
done in Indiana rises to the first magnitude; none 
has achieved the highest eminence; that no "greatest 
American author" may be claimed by that State. 
If this be true, it must be admitted that the average 
attained by the group has been high, and that the 
books published by the State's coterie of writers 
compare favorably with contemporaneous American 
literature. It might be asked. What other State, at the 
present time, can claim a poet who surpasses James 
Whitcomb Riley in expression of the humor, pathos, 
and experience of the lives about him? Who has 
written more interestingly and with more information 
on foreign affairs than John W. Foster or Alpheus H. 
Snow? Who tells a finer story than Beaucaire, or 
excels Evaleen Stein in delicacy of feeling and senti- 
ment in the description of wood, river, and sky? 



356 Historic Indiana 

What American has written more interesting essays 
and biography than Dudley Foulke or more convincing 
addresses than George W. JuHan? What juveniles are 
awaited more eagerly by the children than the tales 
by Mrs. Catherwood, Evaleen Stein, or Annie Fellows 
Johnston? 

While loyally enjoying the successes of its literary 
guild, the people of literary taste, within the State, 
have not lost their discrimination, and scarcely set 
too high a valuation on these publications. They 
are fully conscious that the work done by their neigh- 
bors must be measured by universal standards and 
not by current popularity. Ignoring then the recent 
trade announcement that "of the six best-selling 
novels of the season three of them were written by 
Indiana authors," it may still be claimed that where 
there are so many readers some measure of approval 
must be granted. A wHt has termed the common- 
wealth "a state of mind," but sometimes the facetious- 
ness regarding the Hoosier's reputation of having a 
"monopoly of gray matter" turns out very droll. 
George Ade tells the story of meeting in New York 
a gentleman who said: "At last we have found here 
in New York a native humorist who is just as keen 
as any of those fellows out West. He is as droll as 
Riley, as quaint as Mark Twain, and as fanciful as 
Bill Nye. You ought to meet Simeon Ford." A short 
time after that I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. 
Ford, and during the conversation I referred to him 
as an Eastern man, whereupon he said: "I am living 
here because I have interests in New York City, but 
as a matter of fact I was bom in Lafayette, Indiana." 
"So what 's the use?" inquires Mr. Ade. A New York 
wag was provoked into saying that the Boston pundits' 



Letters and Art in Indiana 357 

plaint that "somebody somewhere was writing good 
Hterature which never gets into print," might be true, 
but not of Indiana. 

People of culture within the State would be the 
last ones, simply from local pride, to blindly give 
promiscuous praise to everything that is published 
from their State. They would be much more apt to 
say of any poor writing, as Sidney Lanier once wrote 
of a very popular Southern novel emanating from 
his own section: 

" From all I can hear 't is a most villainous, poor, pitiful 
piece of work, and so far from endeavoring to serve the 
South by blindly plastering it with absurd praises, I think 
all true patriots ought to unite in redeeming the land from 
the imputation that such books are regarded as casting 
honor upon the section. God forbid we should really be 
brought so low as that we must perforce brag of such works; 
and God be merciful to that man who boasted that sixteen 
thousand of these books have been sold in the South." 

An Eastern reviewer has said : ' ' Whether Hoosiers 
have or have not a right to set up as literateurs, a 
lusty lot of them have successfully assumed the respon- 
sibility and against the tide of adverse influence made 
their way to distinguished recognition." Maurice 
Thompson, in writing of this development, said that 

"the preposterous legend which somehow has linked Indi- 
ana's name with illiteracy and ill-breeding is a legend, and 
nothing more. The fact is that Indiana has always been 
a leader in literature among the Middle West States, just 
as she is now, and her literary people have won recognition 
strictly on the merits of their work. We have the best 
schools in the world — not universities and great colleges 
indeed, but schools for the people in which our entire popu- 
lation is trained to love books. We create a demand for all 



358 Historic Indiana 

sorts of good literary wares. As Indiana goes, so goes the 
Union, may yet be as true in literature as in politics — time 
alone is the arbiter of quality in all book-making. Even the 
Indianians themselves, in their pitch of honest pride, are 
not yet venturing to boast that this remarkable vogue of 
their local writers has drawn around Indianapolis the 
sacred circle of literary primacy, or that their capital 
dome is the axis of the universe." 

On the contrary, most of the men and women of In- 
diana who have published are students with an ever- 
receding ideal, to which they never attain, thinking 
lightly of what they have produced, in comparison 
to that which they have in mind. 

When Edward Eggleston wrote his stories of Indiana 
in 187 1, portraying the Hoosiers of the backwoods 
district, in the southern counties, as he had known 
them "back in the fifties," many people in the State 
resented their publication. They declared that the 
life delineated, and the local coloring of the tales, 
was a libel on the community. Even at that time, 
which was more than thirty-five years ago, many 
native-born Hoosiers had never seen the type of squat- 
ters that Eggleston depicted, had never even heard 
the dialect spoken, and in long residence within the 
towns had not encountered the lean, gaunt type of 
people who had come thither and squatted on lands 
in the back districts of Indiana. These citizens felt 
that outrageous grammar and a drawling dialect 
would be eternally associated, in the minds of the out- 
siders, with their State, and that it would bring dis- 
credit upon all the people. They maintained that it 
misrepresented the large contingent of its educated 
population. 

As Mr. Nicholson says, "this criticism has come 



Letters and Art in Indiana 359 

largely from a new generation that does not view 
these tales as instructive foot-notes to the history of 
education in Indiana." ^ It is true that outside people 
did come to associate the dialect with the State. This 
is unfortunate; but they may learn that the class 
of people delineated in those stories was never large, 
and has diminished before the illuminating influence 
of public schools. The dialect bears the same relation 
to the speech of educated Hoosiers that Yorkshire or 
Cockney dialects do to the language of educated 
English residents of Great Britain. At all events, 
the lives of these settlers afforded picturesque material 
for verse and story, and it is a fact that such people 
were in the State, although never much wanted. The 
backwardness and inertia of these people was an 
element which always had to be contended with, in 
every progressive movement in southern Indiana in 
the last century. 

This class was made up of three streams of im- 
migration: the mountain whites from the South; the 
well bom, but uneducated frontiersmen from the 
same sections; and people of foreign parentage, from 
east of the AUeghanies. The first of these three classes 
and its presence in Indiana makes a study of its origin 
interesting. The peculiar character and speech of 
these poor whites, and the taint of their illiteracy 
within the State, make a passing mention necessary. 

Three or four generations before the first settlement 
of southern Indiana, there had been brought into the 
tide-water colonies, from England, a class of debtors, 
derelicts, and political offenders. It was before the 
days of negro slavery. These people were indentured 
for service to the planters, and after a few years of 

1 Nicholson, Meredith, Hoosiers. New York, 1900. 



360 Historic Indiana 

labor they were freed and many drifted to the western 
frontiers, belonging to Virginia. Convicted criminals 
were sent over in great numbers. Kidnapped boys 
and girls from the streets of London, Bristol, and 
other seaports were huddled on board ship and brought 
to the Southern colonies to work as house servants 
and on the farms. There was also a fair proportion 
of white servants there, who had sold themselves 
into slavery for a brief term, to defray the expense 
of the voyage over. The latter were known as re- 
demptioners and many of them became the respectable 
small farmers of Virginia. 

Among the transported persons there were those 
who had been guilty of trivial offences, only; many 
were political offenders and prisoners of war. Cromwell 
ordered no less than two thousand over, and in turn 
the monarchists sold so many Nonconformists into 
servitude that it created an insurrection in England, 
in 1663. From which it follows that among all of the 
indentured whites who were "involuntary emigrants," 
many were upright and valuable settlers. After 
the general introduction of negro slavery, manual 
labor became a mark of servitude. As a consequence 
of this, there came to be a class of shiftless white 
people, who must either move on or starve. In time, 
many of these withdrew from the settlements, and 
drifted to the frontier. Here in their mountain fast- 
nesses they became a peculiar people. Of unmixed 
English blood, retaining many of the forms of speech 
of the seventeenth-century British, gradually becoming 
a law unto themselves, bereft of all educational ad- 
vantages, they became half savage in their customs 
and passions. Their descendants may still be found, 
and are known as "moonshiners" in the mountains 



Letters and Art in Indiana 361 

of Kentucky and Tennessee; as "corn-crackers" in 
Georgia, and in Florida they are "clay-eaters." All 
of the lowlanders seem to be of a lower type, morally, 
and were probably of a lower origin, than the moun- 
taineers. All are of the same gaunt, shiftless type; 
living on com, pork, wild fruits, and crude whiskey. 
It is estimated that there are more than three millions 
of them in the Southern sections at the present time. 
Into these same mountainous districts there drifted 
nomadic characters, adventurers, hunters, escaped 
criminals, and stranded unfortunates, who joined 
their fortunes with the early immigration. A hardly 
credible isolation from all civilizing contact with the 
world has made this marooned element of the pop- 
ulation, what we find them to-day, the most distinct 
and neglected people in the States. 

We do not associate this tribe of Ishmaelites with 
the section north of the Ohio, and there were com- 
paratively few of them that settled there permanently ; 
but we know that many of these "movers," as they 
were called, did abide for a time in Indiana, and some 
stayed on after the others had journeyed toward the 
Missouri. These itinerant whites used to pass along 
the Kentucky roads toward the north in a listless 
way. They were lank, cadaverous, clay-colored vag- 
abonds, going overland in rickety wagons, drawn 
by raw-boned horses, and a raft of unkempt children 
and mongrel dogs were their only possessions. They 
were clad in homespun and wore dun-colored hats, 
that matched their visages. North they w^ent in 
springtime to "Indeanny," and very often back to 
the South in winter. 

It was these descendants of the "poor whites" of 
the South who brought into the North the language 



362 Historic Indiana 

of the mountaineers of Tennessee, the Carolinas, and 
Kentucky. When they emigrated to the West, they 
seemed incapable of change and improvement. In 
Indiana they were known as renters, seldom acquiring 
land of their own, though there were rich acres all 
about them. Their methods of cultivation were 
shambling and haphazard ; they neglected their meagre 
crops for hunting and fishing, in which they were 
tirelessly occupied. The tale of more game beyond 
would lure them from the clearing they had be- 
gun, and they would sell out for a pittance, and 
move on into the vanishing wilderness. They were 
a silent people unless they drank too much cheap 
whiskey, and then they were apt to be quarrel- 
some, but they were honest and generally inoffen- 
sive. Their language was that of the common 
people of England, which had been astray on the 
heights for generations. They were hopelessly super- 
stitious, a characteristic so well depicted in Dr. Taylor's 
very dramatic dialect verses entitled The Theng. 
This emigrant drift was densely ignorant. Their 
democracy was absolute, and they were loyal to the 
Federal Government. These people have been 
strangely persistent in type wherever found, perpet- 
uating the more than conservative, the really negative 
qualities of their peculiar class. 

Their history has been traced here, because, in ac- 
counting for the dialect found in the non-progressive 
districts of Indiana, these people must have first place. 
They were the people who tainted the language of the 
trans-Alleghany pioneers, from Tennessee to the Lakes. 
Besides these vagabond immigrants, there came into 
the new State decidedly larger numbers of people 
from the South who were descended from far better 



Letters and Art in Indiana 363 

stock, but whose families had migrated westward 
each time new territory had been opened up, without 
waiting to teach their children to read. They were 
often persons of estate and substance at home, but 
it is to be remembered that educational opportunities 
for the English settlers on the Atlantic coast, in the 
seventeenth century, were meagre in the extreme. 
When we recall that the members of these families, 
however well bom, journeyed over the mountains 
and settled in solitary clearings in Kentucky and 
Tennessee, and that their sons moved on to Indiana 
Territory, always seeing other frontier peoples, we can 
easily imagine that superior English speech was hardly 
more than a tradition by the time the third generation 
is encountered along the Ohio Valley. Most of the 
men could read and write, and their minds were keen, 
but they were not cultured. Many of these hardy 
pioneers settled in Indiana. As late as the end of the 
nineteenth century, fully 70,000 residents gave Ken- 
tucky as their place of birth, not to mention Virginia. 
North "Carolina sent a large contingent, not only of 
good Huguenot and Quaker stock, but also the Hoosier 
dialect class. These Southerners were patriotic, 
hospitable people; but in letters they had the dis- 
advantage of three generations of poverty of learning. 
These were the Hoosiers who had that sense of humor 
and dry philosophy still so characteristic of Indianians. 
In severing the ties binding them to the home com- 
munities, the better Southerners often threw off the 
family traditions of culture and gentle life. Many a 
pioneer has retrograded on the frontier. Most of 
these last-mentioned people were of the slave-holding 
class, and had the Southern accent. The sayings, 
superstitions, and omens, as well as the expression 



364 Historic Indiana 

and speech current among them, had been acquired 
by contact with the colored race, in infancy. The 
religion of these Southerners was largely Old School 
Presbyterian and "Hard Shell Baptist," and in politics 
they were with the South. 

Besides these two classes of settlers from the South, 
who influenced the speech of Indiana, and the Scotch- 
Irish people, there was another vein of immigration. 
In the uncultured strata of the State there were 
people of foreign descent who came over the AUeghanies 
into the richer lands of the Ohio Valley, within the 
three States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. They 
made good settlers for the border States, because 
they were laborious and dependable, but they spoke 
the English language in a most barbarous way; much 
of it incorrectly bunched together by American people 
as Pennsylvania Dutch. Large numbers of the early 
settlers, also, had the broad Scotch-Irish dialect. 
These foreign people added another element to the 
"folk-speech" of the new West, and a few of them 
came into Indiana. It was the opinion and prejudices 
of some of these classes which it was so difificult to 
counterbalance, by the efforts of the educated people 
of clear English descent, who came into the State 
from the East and South. As late as 1850, there were 
fifty thousand of them who voted against free schools. 

It was the speech of these people which came to be 
known as the Hoosier dialect and it vitiated the 
English of those about them. They had little learning 
and scarcely knew how little. They all came from 
other States and brought their characteristics of speech 
with them ; few, if any, were coined on Indiana soil. 

Mr. Hayworth and his collaborator O. G. S., writing 
in the Indianapolis News, five or six years ago, and 



Letters and Art in Indiana 365 

discussing folk-speech in Indiana in the most interesting 
manner, said many true things, from which we make 
the following extracts : 

"Not only has folk-speech never been uniform through- 
out Indiana, but exact geographical bounds cannot be 
given to the Hoosier dialect. The fact is, it has always 
been true, and never more so than in these days of rapid 
communication and shifting population, that in nothing 
is the student of folk-speech so liable to error as in assigning 
geographical limits to a phrase or word. Our local dialects, 
as well as the local English dialects from which we get 
many of our folk words and phrases, are pretty thoroughly 
mixed. Probably some if not all of the following words 
and phrases are more frequently used in the benighted 
regions of Indiana than elsewhere: 'Heap-sight,' as in 
'more ground by a heap-sight'; 'juberous,' as in *I felt 
mighty juberous about crossin' the river'; 'jamberee,' in 
the sense of a 'big time'; 'flabbergasted,' i. e., exhausted; 
'gangling,' i. e., awkward; 'I mind that,' for 'I remember 
that.' But the individuality of a dialect is, in fact, far 
more a result of accent, or of pronunciation, than of 
the possession of expressions peculiar to itself. As has 
just been pointed out, Indiana has but few provincialisms 
that are peculiarly her own. But where else than among 
these settlers would one hear the long-drawn flatness of 
the 'a' insuch words as 'sasser,' 'saft,' 'pasnips,' etc.? . . . 
One would hear such a sentence as * I swum straight acrost 
the crick, an' kep' agoin' right ahead through the paster, 
an' dim plum to the top of yan ridge over yander, an' 
wus consid'rable tired-like comin' down t'other side, but 
at last got to that air road,' pronounced as a citizen of 
'Hoopole kyounty, Injeanny,' would have pronounced it 
forty years ago. ' Between you and me and the gate-post ' 
is a formula used in impressing the necessity of secrecy. 
'When he gits a dollar it 's got home' is an admirable 
description of a stingy man. An old woman from the hills 



366 Historic Indiana 

of Brown County once expressively described to one of 
the writers the feelings experienced after a night spent 
in dancing by saying, 'When I 'us goin' home in the momin* 
both sides of the road 'ud belong to me." * 

Mr. Nicholson very truthfully observes that 

"it may be fairly questioned whether, properly speaking, 
there ever existed a Hoosier dialect. A book of colloquial 
terms could hardly be compiled for Indiana without in- 
fringing upon prior claims of other and older States, and 
the peculiarities that were carried westward from tide- 
water early in the century. The distinctive Indiana 
countryman, the real Hoosier, who has been little in 
contact with the people of cities, speaks a good deal as 
his Pennsylvania or North Carolina or Kentucky grand- 
parents did before him, and has created nothing new. 
His speech contains comparatively few words that are 
peculiar to the State." ^ 

The origin of the very name of Hoosier, as applied 
to the settlers of Indiana, is lost in the twilight of the 
wilderness. Whether it came from a drawling pro- 
nunciation of "who 's-heyer?" or was a corruption of 
"Hussar," as applied to deserters from the ranks of 
the hirelings in the British army of the Revolution, 
is not known. At all events the word has always 
been used by trans-Alleghany pioneers as a general 
term to designate a verdant or uncouth person, and 
later to the outlanders, living across the Ohio River. 
In time it became attached to the extreme border 
territory of that period; which happening to be In- 
diana and Southern Illinois, it clung to that section. 
The dialect by that name was used by the border 

> Hayworth, Paul L., and O. G. S. Indianapolis News, Aug. 15, 
1900. 

' Nicholson, Meredith, Hoosiers. New York, 1900. 



Letters and Art in Indiana 367 

people generally, not alone by the few of them who 
became residents of Indiana. 

After this digression to determine the sources of 
the backwoods use of English as it was practised in 
Indiana, and allied districts, we return to the state- 
ment that the preservation of this passing form of 
speech, in story and verse, should not be resented by 
Indianians. The thought, the sentiments, and the 
environment of the early settlers had been embodied 
by them in the verses written, in more classic English, 
by many of the contributors to the "Poet's Corner" 
in the local papers, and have since been included in 
permanent collections; but none of them wrote in 
dialect. In fact, these very earliest writers used 
Addisonian phrases — the best of evidence that the 
Hoosier dialect was not universal. 

The stories of Mr. Eggleston were the first to fully 
delineate the life in the hill districts. The dialect in 
Mr. Eggleston's tales was not so true to life as is that 
in Mr. Riley's poems, but he gave the true frontier 
setting in which it occurred, and his characterizations 
are generally faithful. The actual personalities of 
the backwoodsmen stand before you. Sometimes he 
verges on caricature, but in the main, he is true to 
the life that he is trying to portray. The schoolhouse 
with its puncheon floor and great fireplace, the scarc- 
ity of schoolbooks, the rough, unruly, uncouth boys, 
were the very scenes to which the barefooted pupils 
went for instruction in the three R's. Mr. Eggleston 
reproduces vividly the superstitiously religious life of 
part of the people, as contrasted with the rude royster- 
ing of their drinking neighbors, of whom they heartily 
disapproved. He pictures the drawbacks of the bad 
roads, and the poverty of life's conveniences, and 



o 



68 Historic Indiana 



necessities as well. He depicts the sensational ex- 
hortations of the itinerant preachers, and the effect 
of their hell-and-damnation preaching on their ignorant 
hearers. He shows the grovelling materialism of the 
toothless old crone as she smokes her cob pipe by the 
fireplace and reiterates, "While yur gitten git a 
plenty, sez I"; pictures the easy-going husband, 
chopping a handful of wood out in the weather, until 
the old cracker reappears in all his hereditary shift- 
lessness. Among these life-like reproductions, he does 
not neglect to bring out the occasional poetic soul, 
always found amongst the rudest people — a young girl, 
or youth, born amid such discouraging surroundings, 
trying to develop according to the longings within 
their isolated natures. All these are actual pictures 
of real neighborhoods, happily passing into oblivion, 
and even now only history. 

"I call him the first of the Hoosiers," writes George 
Gary Eggleston, of his older brother, "because he was 
the first to perceive and utilize in literature the pic- 
turesqueness of the Hoosier life and character, to 
appreciate the poetic and romantic possibilities of that 
life, and invite others to share with him his enjoyment 
of its humor and his admiration for its sturdy man- 
liness." ^ It may be regretted that untra veiled people 
take Eggleston's stories of backwoods life, nearly 
extinct a half-century ago, as a reflection of present 
conditions in Indiana cities, just as Europeans do 
Fenimore Cooper's Indian stories of New York State — 
but that must pass. The grammar, the quaint terms, 
the peculiar pronunciations, the nasal drawl of all 
the dialect stories seem picturesque to a new gen- 
eration, but that dialect was a menace to the speech 

* Eggleston, Geo. Gary, The First of the Hoosiers. Ferno, 1903. 



Letters and Art in Indiana 369 

of the early settlers and unconsciously affected the 
English of whole neighborhoods of people who were 
of widely different birth. In the crude conditions of 
living and the democratic mingling of all classes on 
the frontier, children drifted into lax habits of speech 
and constantly borrowed words and prhases from 
illiterate neighbors, farm-hands, or the household help. 
In the third generation, graduates of a college, with 
an advanced degree from a German university, have 
been guilty of lapses into this primitive speech, 
still clinging to them from their early environment. 
None will say that the speech was not delightfully 
full of surprises in the phrasing, in the rural com- 
parisons, now nearly obsolete, and in the quaint 
humor, the stoical philosophy, and droll illiteracy 
of a frontier people. "The material waited only for 
the creative mind and sympathetic intelligence," and 
again found a faithful interpreter in James Whitcomb 
Riley. 

As an evidence of the integrity of his portraiture 
and characterizations, it is noted that these very 
people enjoy hearing his verses read, as much as any 
city audience. They feel the genuineness of his sym- 
pathetic acquaintance, recognize his types of char- 
acter, his love of nature, enjoy the humor of the 
situations, the drollery of the talk, and are touched 
by the pathos of the stories. Mr. Riley tells most 
entertaining stories of his acquaintance with these 
people : 

" Sometimes some real country boy gives me the round 
turn on some farm points. For instance here comes one 
stepping up to me, — 'You never lived on a farm,' he 
says. 'Why not?' says I. 'Well,' says he, 'a turkey-cock 
gobbles, but he don't ky-ouck, as your poetry says.' He 



3 70 Historic Indiana 

had me right there. It 's the turkey-hen that ky-oucks. 
' Well, you '11 never hear another turkey-cock of mine 
ky-ouckin,' says I." 

Naturally, Mr. Riley finds it difficult to get the 
present-day illustrators to seize his idea of the char- 
acters he is trying to portray. Mr. Christie got That 
Old Sweetheart of Mine through school, in a real log 
schoolhouse, with sun-bonnet on her tangled curls, 
and bare feet going along the meadow paths, but 
when grown to womanhood he painted »her in city garb 
with city airs and graces. In speaking of this difficulty, 
Mr. Riley said: 

" I do not undertake to edit nature, either physical or 
human. I can't get an artist to see I 'm not making fun. 
They seem to think if a man is out of plumb in his language, 
he must be in his morals. Now old Benjamin looks queer, 
I '11 admit. His clothes don't fit him. He 's bent and 
awkward; but that don't prevent him from having a fine 
head and deep tender eyes, and a soul in him you can 
recommend." 

These countrymen drive miles to an evening enter- 
tainment at some schoolhouse or church to hear 
recitations from Riley's pages. If loaned a copy of 
his verses, they will ask for everything else that he 
has written. They feel, as one of his biographers 
has remarked, that Mr. Riley never satirizes, never 
ridicules his creations; his attitude is always that of 
a kindly and admiring advocate. The countrymen 
also appreciate his poems of correct literature, not 
written in dialect. Outside of these native admirers, 
Mr. Riley was soon received with universal enthusiasm. 
Mr. Garland wrote of him several years ago that no 
poet in the United States has the same hold upon 



Letters and Art in Indiana 371 

the minds of the people as Riley. He is absolutely- 
American in every line he writes. His work is ir- 
resistibly comic, or tender, or pathetic. In this re- 
viewer's estimation, the man is the most remarkable 
exemplification of the power of genius to transmute 
plain clods into gold, that we have seen since the 
time of Burns. Of himself, he has said, "I 'm only 
the 'wilier' through which the whistle comes." Mr. 
Riley's inimitable readings from his own composition 
testify that he is a natural actor; this is the verdict 
of every audience. Amy Leslie, the dramatic critic^ 
wrote when she heard him years ago in Chicago: 

" To hear Riley recite his own poems is a treat to re- 
member an entire life. He has the oddest, most gray and 
toneless face. There is a three-cornered smile and a two- 
edged glance which illuminates his face like a shower of 
stars. Tears come at the call of words so simple as to 
have a tinge of comedy, where the softest minor chords 
tremble. All that is quaint and humorous ignites the 
pleasantries within him, all that is true and innocent 
inspires him. He never broods, nor rails, nor chants 
ecstasies, but laughs and weeps and ties brave old-fashioned 
true love-knots. I imagine he may not read at all well 
as elocution is accounted. I do not know, except that 
it is the loveliest reading I have ever heard, and the sweetest 
poetry." 

Mr. Garland quotes him as saying, of himself, "I 'm 
so blamed imitative, I don't dare to read everything." 
His ability to imitate was fully established when he 
published on a wager, and in a newspaper, lines en- 
titled Leonanie which trapped England and America 
into treasuring them as Poe's verses. 

A critical reviewer said of the Hoosier poet that 
the qualities which secure his poetry a wider reading 



372 Historic Indiana 

and heartier appreciation than any other hving Amer- 
ican are wholesome common-sense, and a steady 
cheerfulness, freedom from dejection and cynicism 
and doubt, and untainted by the mould of sensuality. 
At his best he is original and sane, full of the sweetest 
vitality and soundest merriment. His poetry neither 
argues, nor stimulates, nor denounces, nor exhorts; 
it only touches and entertains us. 

"While his poems in dialect gained him a hearing," 
says Mr. Nicholson, "Mr. Riley strove earnestly for 
excellence in the use of literary English. His touch 
grew steadily finer. He had begun to write because 
he felt the impulse and not because he breathed a 
literary atmosphere or looked forward to a literary 
career." ^ Lacking the advantages of an earlier 
training in the schools, and having a natural appreci- 
ation of the best in literature, he formed his style by 
private study without losing his individuality, his 
humor, and his inimitable sense of character and 
situation, which make him a natural writer of comedy. 
Apparently, he can dramatize a scene almost instan- 
taneously, as the personcB assemble themselves in 
the fancy. After years of recognition by the public 
and many tokens of their appreciation, he was invited 
by one of the oldest universities to accept an honorary 
degree. At the Yale convocation in 1902 that uni- 
versity conferred the degree of Master of Arts upon 
James Whitcomb Riley. In receiving the candidate, 
President Hadley spoke of Mr. Riley as an exponent 
in poetic art of the joy and pathos of American country 
life. When the hood was placed on his shoulders, 
the prolonged applause of the vast throng assembled 
made that scholar's emblem as a crown of laurel. 

' Nicholson, Meredith, Hoosiers. New York, 1900. 



Letters and Art in Indiana 373 

Old alumni and undergraduates joined in giving the 
Hoosier poet a great ovation, and felt that old Yale 
honored itself in honoring him. The graduating class 
of that June day loves to claim that James Whitcomb 
Riley was of their class of '02. 

" Thou gavest thy gifts to make life sweet ; 
There shall be flowers about thy feet." 

Primitive living and frontier environment have 
seldom prompted the subjects of the later Hoosier 
writings. Showing not the faintest resemblance, in 
either literary style or subject, to the preceding writers 
who have preserved the earlier Hoosier life in their 
pages, another loyal Indianian, with a widely different 
temperament from theirs, has written in the West 
his stories of the Orient. General Lew Wallace was 
born and reared in Indiana when it was actually 
a Western frontier, but his books are about ancient 
peoples; one concerned with the Aztec civilization, 
and the rest Asiatic tales. Nothing in his youthful 
life could have suggested the themes which his talent 
developed into the Prince of India and Ben Hur. 
That General Wallace has told an interesting tale is 
shown by the feet that a million and a half copies of 
Ben Hur have sold in the English version and it has 
also been translated into every language of Europe, 
into Arabic, and Japanese, and printed in raised- 
letter for the blind. This Tale of the Christ, so guardedly 
received at first, has grown steadily in the favor of 
the people until, in presentation in a dramatized 
form upon the stage, the story met with a sensational 
reception. Ben Hur and his other books brought great 
distinction to the author. That General Wallace was, 
above all things, a writer who could enlist the interest 



374 Historic Indiana 

of the reader is shown in the Autobiography pubHshed 
since his death. Surely his native commonwealth 
could show no greater honor to a son than Indiana 
has in placing General Wallace's statue in the Hall 
of Fame. 

Mrs. Wallace shared her husband's triumphs and 
had honors of her own, from her writings regarding 
the Pueblos, some early poems. The Repose in Egypt, 
and The Storied Sea. Mrs. Wallace was also a native 
of Indiana, born in the literary atmosphere of Craw- 
fords ville, and one of the Elston family, all of whom 
were known as interesting conversationists. Hon. 
Henry S. Lane married into this family, and added 
to the brilliancy of the reputation of the college 
town for its leadership in culture during those early 
days. 

Within this same town, the scholarly Maurice 
Thompson, another prolific writer, and native Indianian, 
passed most of his life, after the Civil War. Without 
once dreaming the dreams that came to his neighbors, 
the Wallaces, Mr. Thompson wrote charming novels, 
a widely known book on Archery, and beautiful out- 
of-door poems. His story entitled the Banker of 
B anker sville, (unfortunately, for it has little to do with 
either, and does not distinguish it as it deserves), is 
an excellent picture of village life in Indiana; not the 
backwoods, but the average small towns. His essay 
on Ethics of Literary Art deserves embodiment in 
every course in English literature. Although a civil 
engineer, and a lawyer, Mr. Thompson's later life 
was more constantly devoted to literary work than 
any of the other Indiana writers up to his time. In 
the closing days of his career, he enjoyed the triumph, 
if he cared for popular favor, of having his name on 



Letters and Art in Indiana 375 

every tongue, for his sweet story of Alice of Old Vin- 
cennes captured the people. 

Will H. Thompson, brother of Maurice, was also 
bom in Indiana and practised law in Crawfordsville 
for many years. While living in the State he wrote 
that great war poem High Tide at Gettysburg and also 
the Bond of Blood. 

The Soldier of Indiana in the War for the Union, 
by Catherine Merrill, is a record of the part performed 
by individual soldiers who went out from this common- 
wealth. It was written soon after that war, and the 
purpose of the author was the patriotic one of com- 
memorating the sacrifice and heroism of the ordinary 
soldier. She knew the reality of that which she penned, 
for she served many months as a nurse in the hospitals 
during the war. Without any noise or announcement 
she had intense patriotism, both civic and for her 
country. 

" She was far from being an organizer of movements, 
or a trampler of platforms. She cared neither to agitate nor 
to fulminate [says her biographer]. All of the civic and 
social betterment, in which she engaged so much of her 
strength and vitality, came from her great love of our 
neighbor, and from the impulse toward action, help, 
beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing 
human confusion, and demolishing human misery, the no- 
ble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than 
she found it." ^ 

This memorial to the soldiers was written in her 
earlier years, by the woman who probably led more 
families along the paths towards real culture than 

' Merrill, Catherine, Memoir in The Man Shakespeare and Other 
Essays. Indianapolis, 1867. 



376 Historic Indiana 

any other Indiana woman. Catherine Merrill "in- 
culcated in the minds of three generations a discrim- 
inating taste for literature," and what Matthew Arnold 
calls a liberal and intelligent eagerness about the 
things of the mind. Miss Merrill's printed work includes 
this war record of the troops for whom she worked 
so nobly in her early womanhood, a series of literary 
criticisms given to the press, and a slender volume 
of essays selected by the literary club which bore 
her name. These essays were included by them 
with biographical sketches from her friends Professor 
Melville B. Anderson and the naturalist Mr. John 
Muir. The volume is entitled The Man Shakespeare 
and Other Essays. Although Miss Merrill left so little 
published writing, no story of Indiana's development 
would be complete without a reckoning of the im- 
pression which her life made on all those with whom 
she came in contact. Other notable teachers of the 
State have faithfully instructed more pupils in the 
schools, and added to the usefulness and enlightenment 
of their students; but it has fallen to the lot of few 
people to have formed a literary taste and deepened 
the moral insight of the youth of one generation, to 
execute the same loving task for their children, and 
to perform a like service for their grandchildren. 

Miss Merrill was a daughter of the pioneer State 
Treasurer, Samuel Merrill, whose influence and that 
of his descendants has stood for the value of culture 
and literary training as a means of creating a culti- 
vated citizenship. During all of her professorship at 
Butler University, and later when she held private 
classes. Miss Merrill found time to take part as a 
valuable member in the literary clubs of Indianapolis, 
to prepare addresses for other circles, and to conduct 



Letters and Art in Indiana 377 

classes at the earnest solicitation of old pupils, in 
neighboring cities. 

Professor Anderson's sketch of Miss Merrill places 
before us a correct valuation of her career. Among 
other things he says that her life teaches us we should 
bear in mind particularly that Catherine Merrill's 
fine wide culture offers the most signal and cheering 
example of the educative power of English literature. 
With her beloved sister they made their own home 
the centre of humanizing culture and elevated thought, 
seemingly unconscious of the joy it was to every one 
to come within the charm of their presence, "preaching 
without sermons, informal as sunshine." Mr. Muir, 
appreciating the great points in Miss Merrill's character, 
adds, "Nothing in all her noble love-ladened life was 
more characteristic than its serenity," and an equally 
strong habit of her mind was "tracing the springs 
of action through all concealment. She never left 
herself in doubt as to motives, rejoicing in all truth, 
especially happy when she discovered something to 
praise." ^ 

From this slight sketch of Miss Merrill, a dim idea 
may be gained of the reasons for her influence over 
the large number of persons in Indiana who came 
under her guidance. It follows that "those who had 
the good fortune to know a human being so large 
and excellent should take pious care that her memory 
does not fade with the passing of the lives she im- 
mediately touches." ^ Perhaps the greatest value of 
the publication of the little memorial volume is its 
power to recall to minds of her old pupils the teachings 

• Muir, John, Memoir of Miss Merrill in introduction to The Man 
Shakespeare and Other Essays. Indianapolis, 1900. 
2 Ibid. 



378 Historic Indiana 

of that voice they shall never hear again. Reading 
these pages one may experience the conviction, the 
exaltation, the enthusiasm of the classroom under that 
severe but impressive teacher. Calmly she again 
reminds them through the printed pages that 

" ' Superficial judgment, hasty and ill-formed opinion, 
blunt the power of discrimination and dull the sense of 
right.' 'Slovenly and false work of any kind tells on 
character.' 'Prejudice is twin sister of ignorance and is 
a stupendous bulwark against knowledge.' 'The individual 
preserves his mental integrity by doing his own thinking 
and maintaining a sense of justice and candor.' 'We 
hold in grateful remembrance the hand that planted the 
tree that shades our door, and we owe grateful rever- 
ence and love to him who made for us a good book, who 
gave us nobler loves and nobler cares. We owe nothing 
for the books that are no better than wolves in sheep's 
clothing. We owe it to none to call ugliness beauty, 
awkwardness grace, falsehood truth, or wrong, in any 
way, right. Black is black, crooked is crooked, wrong 
is wrong, whatever the reason, wherever the place.' 

In inculcating a love for books she would say: 

"It is true that the best society and the most accessible 
may be found in the library. Here the solitary and the sor- 
rowful, the disappointed and the erring, the betrayed and 
the deserted, the unthanked benefactor, the young who are 
sensitive as to the limitations of poverty, the old who 
have neglected to repair their friendship, the slow who 
have been left behind, the weary, Ijhe over-burdened may 
find company, solace, stimulus, and the happy and strong 
may find increase of happiness and strength." ^ 

Passing to another writer who was also greatly 

> Merrill, Catherine, The Man Shakespeare and Other Essays. 
Indianapolis, 1902. 



Letters and Art in Indiana 379 

revered, we are reminded that Indiana has been 
honored by her historians. To Mr. John Dillon the 
State owes a lasting debt, for his conscientious history 
of the territorial period and his monographs on different 
phases of its development. Mr. Dillon was an earnest 
student and painstaking historian. His methods were 
the modern scientific ones. His facts were gleaned 
from State archives, from private sources, and from 
territorial records. His histories must live, for the 
account of the transactions in the periods covered 
by his writings may only be added to; everything 
that he committed to paper is of value. "He had 
certain noble ideals, severe and simple, as to the 
office of historian, and no artist was truer to his art 
than he to this ideal." 

As General Coburn has said, Mr. Dillon knew that 
his work would endure. He had no profession but 
letters, and in the solid result of his best labors neither 
money nor applause added to his satisfaction. No 
library in America can be considered complete without 
his histories. He was a noble example of integrity, 
modesty, industry, and purity of character. Mr. 
Dillon wrote some verses, but it is from his History 
of Territorial Indiana and the monographs on the 
same subject that his place as an author is 
assured. 

"Forty years of honest, conscientious devotion, four 
books that people would not buy, in his life-time, and 
death in a lonely garret, face to face with grim poverty, 
because he wrought for the love of truth, and not for 
dollars [says Mr. Cottman] this is the life story of John 
B. Dillon. He is buried in Crown Hill, next to the soldiers' 
graves, and the friends who were kind to him in life have 
erected a fitting monument to his memory. That he lies 



380 Historic Indiana 

beside the heroic dead is well, for he, too, gave his life 
to a cause and did his country a service. " ^ 

The vogue of Indiana novels has not, very naturally, 
been accorded to her historians, but their work will 
live. It has been thorough, scientific, and con- 
scientious. Mr. Jacob P. Dunn's History of Territorial 
Indiana, and her redemption from slavery, and his 
monographs on different periods of the history of the 
State are enduring contributions to the records of 
the West. Mr. Dunn goes to original sources for his 
information. He is a tireless student of documents, 
records, and official papers, and restates the whole 
story in an interesting style. He has the ability, 
none too common, said a critic, to write history at- 
tractively, without imperilling his authority. No 
tribute from the writer could add to the importance 
attached to Mr. Dunn's work as authoritative, than 
the presence in this volume of extended quotations 
from his histories and monographs. 

In a similar manner has Mr. Dudley Foulke's Bi- 
ography of Governor Morton, and his Times, served as 
an accepted authority on that most interesting period 
the Civil War. The students of Indiana's part in the 
great struggle must go to that biography for light 
on the inside history of the troubled times, and for a 
knowledge of both the well known and the obscure 
facts of the history of those years. 

Mr. John L. Griffith's Biography of President Benja- 
min Harrison will be of importance for the same 
reason. Aside from its interest as literature it deals 
with the career of a great figure in national history. 
It is written by a resident of Indiana, of an Indiana 

> Cottman, Geo. S., in hidiana I\lagazine of History, vol. i., No. i. 



( 



Letters and Art in Indiana 381 

man who also became the State's most noted citizen 
and renowned statesman. 

Hon. John W. Foster's Twenty Years of Diplomacy 
is an interesting book, written by one who has taken 
a brilHant and valued part in the department of the 
government service of which this volume and others 
by the same author treat. 

The historical writings of Professor John Clark 
Ridpath, while not pertaining to the State, in par- 
ticular, are of importance in this sketch because he 
was a native of Indiana, was educated in one of her 
universities, and was afterwards a member of the 
faculty of Asbury for a number of years. His his- 
torical work was voluminous, and was both national 
and general in its scope. His career as a professor 
with his alma mater formed a valuable element in 
the educational work in Indiana. Other teachers 
in the various Indiana colleges, as Professor Ogg, 
Professor Moran, and many others have contributed 
valuable special studies in history, but they cannot 
be enumerated as native Hoosiers. 

The famous Scotch philosopher and teacher Thomas 
Davidson has said of another Indiana book, originally 
written for the State Teachers' Reading Circle: "I 
hoped to satisfy the desire, evinced by so many of 
the young people, to discuss social problems, and 
took for the basis a single book, Charles Richmond 
Henderson's Social Elements, which I hoped to have 
discussed chapter by chapter. The book was well 
adapted for our purpose, offering a comprehensive 
view of the whole field of sociology, and treating 
every part with simplicity and good judgment." ^ 

1 Davidson, Thomas, The Education of the Wage-Earners. Bos- 
ton, 1904. 



382 Historic Indiana 

This book has been translated into Japanese under 
the direction of Professor Takebe of Tokio University. 

The student of Indiana's history will find invaluable 
information in the histories, biographies, reminiscences, 
and historical papers by George W. Julian, William 
Henry Smith, Augustus L. Mason, Julia S. Conklin, 
William W. Woolen, Captain J. A. Lemcke, William 
H. English, W. W. Thornton, Richard G. Boone, 
Timothy E. Howard, Colonel Cockrum, David Turpie, 
M. M. Pershing, Professor Rawles, Judge Howe, and 
Rev. T. H. Ball. Each of these has occupied a promi- 
nent place in the districts of the State in which they 
lived, and they knew whereof they wrote. The books 
and monographs by W. F. Harding, Frederick Bartel, 
and George B. Lockwood are full of information on 
local or special phases of Indiana history, and the 
interest they enlist in historical subjects is enhanced 
by their literary style. W. S. Blatchley, W. W. Woolen, 
and others have written charming nature studies, 
attractive to the young and old. The Hon. Hugh 
McCulloch, during a brilliant career as a financier 
and cabinet officer, wrote authoritatively on financial 
subjects and left a volume on Men and Measures of 
Half a Century. Colonel Richard Thompson not 
only served his State and nation long and nobly, in 
military and political life, but closed his career with 
his very interesting Recollections of Sixteen Presidents. 
The annalists have performed a service in preserving 
local history by their records and reminiscences. San- 
ford Cox's Recollections of the Wabash Valley, Rev. 
Thomas Goodwin's Reminiscences, Blackford Condit's 
Recollections of Early Terre Haute are most entertaining. 
County histories, the published addresses of Wayne 
and other county celebrations, the Hon. William 



Letters and Art in Indiana 383 

Holloway's and Mr. Berry Sulgrove's histories of 
Indianapolis are valuable contributions to the State's 
records of the past. 

Mr. Sulgrove was also a brilliant journalist, and 
exerted a wide influence through his writings for the 
press, extending over a number of years. He was 
the close friend and adviser of Governor Morton during 
the Civil War. His judgment was excellent and his 
opinions reliable. It is said that he possessed a mar- 
vellous memory, and that, his mind being stored with 
vast information, he was an unusually interesting 
conversationist. In 1866, when Mr. Sulgrove was in 
Paris with Governor Morton in a company of dis- 
tinguished men, one evening a discussion arose between 
two gentlemen present about a quotation from Horace. 
When the debate between the British guests seemed 
hopeless of decision, Mr. Sulgrove modestly begged 
leave to give the quotation and also added a half- 
page or more of the context, to the wonderment of 
the learned gentlemen, who marvelled at his memory 
and scholarship. The story is told of Mr. Sulgrove 
that in his later years he was in London with a friend 
from Indianapolis. This friend was invited to dine 
with the Lord Chief Justice and declined the honor, 
saying that he had a friend with him whom he could 
not very well leave. Lord Coleridge would not let 
the gentleman off and stipulated that he should bring 
his friend, Mr. Sulgrove, with him. After the dinner 
there was brilliant talk of affairs, of the world's 
happenings, of literature, science, and travel, in all of 
which Mr. Sulgrove joined with the brilliancy which 
a lively interchange of thought provokes in the re- 
sponsive American. The next day the host called on 
his guest and inquired who this friend from Indiana 



384 Historic Indiana 

was; said that after they had said good-night, he and 
his guests had declared they had never heard such 
an interesting talker and they had searched in every 
encyclopedia, biographical dictionary, and list of 
people in the United States on the shelves of the 
library, to learn who B. Sulgrove was; for they were 
sure they could not be ignorant of the career of such 
a brilliant man. 

Very naturally the period of stress and storm 
which Indiana passed in common with the rest of the 
States during the Civil War gave rise to stanzas of 
more heroic measure than the earlier wildwood poems. 
These were the years when Forsythe Willson wrote 
The Old Sergeant, and Will H. Thompson gave out 
his High Tide at Gettysburg. There were other hearts 
that found a place in the "Poet's Corner" for their 
expression of patriotism, and pent-up sorrows over 
those lost on the field of battle. The fugitive writings 
of Ben D. House, Daniel L. Paine, Lee O. Harris, 
and others who wrote then, have been collected by 
appreciative friends and published. 

In the years since the war, Indiana has produced 
Maurice Thompson, James Whitcomb Riley, Meredith 
Nicholson, Wm. Vaughn Moody, Evaleen Stein, Eliz- 
abeth Conwell, the Fellows sisters, and others, all of 
whom have written in both poetry and prose, to the 
great pleasure of thousands of readers. The same 
note of enjoyment in all of nature's charm, the breath 
of out-of-doors, still rings through the Hoosier verse, 
but it is coupled with human interests and the style 
of composition conforms to modem forms. There is 
a facility, a grace, and strength unknown to the earlier 
period. 

It is interesting to note how many of the poems 



Letters and Art in Indiana 



0^5 



that have become familiar household words were 
penned by Hoosier writers. There are Little Brown 
Hands, Six Little Feet on the Fender, Paddle Your Own 
Canoe, The Patter of Little Feet, Better Late than Never, 
Some Say This World is an Old, Old World; Yes, the 
Smiling Clouds are Angels; Papa, What Would you Take 
for Me?; Sleep, Little Sweetheart, Sleep; Love Came to Me 
in a Life so Late; The Curfew Shall Not Ring To-Night, 
and many others too well known to need recall. 

Mr. Meredith Nicholson had secured a hearing ,by 
his journalistic work before he published either story 
or verse. Few lines by present-day poets, in this 
country, have the charm of some of his late poems. 
His fiction seems less analytical, less reflective than his 
friends would have expected from him, perhaps, but 
his stories seized upon popular approval at once. In The 
House of a Thousand Candles he has created an exciting 
plot-story, with a series of startling episodes, crowding 
one upon another. The interest is sustained through- 
out, as it also is in his later and better story The Port 
of Missing Men. Mr. Nicholson's essays contributed 
to the various periodicals, and his book on Indiana 
entitled Hoosier s, have received their meed of com- 
mendation from the writer, in the liberal quotations 
from their pages in this volume. 

"Is the novel destined to devour all other forms of 
literature?" asks a critic; certainly its prevalence 
would seem to indicate the sweep of a wide and pow^er- 
ful imagination, but ver>^ much of current fiction 
produced everywhere is crude, and still less clever. 
Imaginative writing requires more art than is fre- 
quently accorded it, and few are free from the im- 
putation of hurried work. The large number of 
Indiana wTiters at the present day, who have attracted 



386 Historic Indiana 

attention by their great popularity, is indicative of this 
wide interest in fiction. Evidently the public, as 
Mr. Riley said of his own leisure hours, "read a good 
deal of chop-food fiction and browse with relish." 
It is a matter of congratulation that the Hoosier 
writers in general have given out healthy, wholesome 
stories, devoid of morbid sentiments and taint of 
moral decadence. 

The variety of subjects that interest Indiana authors 
is also to be remarked. Scarcely any two have written 
upon the same theme. Within one family, we have 
John A. Wilstach devoting his years to classical studies 
and publishing his translations, with voluminous 
critical notes, of Virgil and Dante ; his son, Walter 
Wilstach, writing a charming biographical sketch of 
Montalembert, and another son, Paul, issuing a manual 
on The Game of Solitaire, some short stories, several 
acting plays, and a notable work of dramatic review 
in his Biography of Richard Mansfield. 

In another instance we have Mr. Beveridge writing 
a homily entitled The Everyday Life of a Young Man, 
and again he appears as the prophet of the Russian 
Advance. Environment and nature's charms sug- 
gested subjects to the earlier writers, but General 
Wallace dwelt on Oriental themes, in far-away lands. 
Robert Dale Owen, who was of Scotch birth, but one 
whose life was passed in Indiana, wrote a spiritualistic 
book, On the Boundaries of Another World, a volume 
of fiction, many vigorous state papers and public 
addresses. William Dudley Foulke urged civil service 
reform, wrote a biography of absorbing interest, and 
published a translation, with scholarly notes, of Paul 
the Deacon's History of the Longohards. 

Again, an Indiana lawyer turns back the hands 



Letters and Art in Indiana 387 

of time to the days When Knighthood Was in Flower. 
His are no problem novels. Charles Major knows 
that the average reader wants sensation; wants 
scenes and circumstances depicted with which he is 
not familiar; wants something that will take him out 
of the daily round of everyday life. Mr. Major has 
supplied tales of the days of chivalry, and the public 
has rewarded his efforts. 

Another story by an Indianian carries us back to 
the seventeenth century, in Dutch New York, Professor 
Henry T. Stephenson's Patroon Von Falkonhurg being 
a charming tale of that period. George Barr 
McCutcheon, within a half-dozen years, has dashed 
off a stream of stories of adventure, written in a popular 
vein, that has given him a multitude of readers. His 
stories have had a wide vogue, and he seems to agree 
with a pronouncement of Sir Leslie Stephen's, that 
the author of the future may give up bothering himself 
about posterity, and be content w^ith writing for his 
contemporaries, and the immediate present. 

The .Gentleman from Indiana has gone far and wide 
for material, since his first Hoosier stories, and his 
style improves with time. The lightness and delicacy 
of Beaucaire would be difficult to surpass, but In the 
Arena, Hector, His Own People, and the longer novel 
The Conquest of Canaan, are original, spirited stories 
that show keen discernment and an intimate knowledge 
of Americans, their characteristics, and their life. Mr, 
Tarkington has the gift of expression, an artistic 
touch, and a sense of character that is most satisfactory. 
Some of his first novels were crude in their develop- 
ment, but they are prettily set in their proper environ- 
ment, the people are natural in the life in which he 
places them, and he knew" how to tell a story interest- 



388 Historic Indiana 

ingly. Is it not to Booth Tarkington that the people 
of the State are looking to write of the real gentleman 
from Indiana? Mr. Eggleston, Mr. Riley, and others 
have given the Hoosier with the dialect; but the 
native-born Hoosier of straight English descent, with 
his perfectly natural manners, and decided individ- 
uality, has not yet "been put in a book." Mr. Tar- 
kington knows him. He will be recognized by his 
droll humor, his keenness for knowledge, without 
great learning — generally a "fresh water" college man, 
if a college man at all. In physique he will be tall and 
sinewy; unconventional in dress. Not at all peculiar 
in character, but indefinably a Westerner. Earnest, 
but self-controlled, full of ideas and not afraid to 
mention them, and, as was said of John DeFrees, 
with a courage that seemed to have no weak side, 
mental, moral, or physical. He will be moral and 
religious, but one will hardly call him pious; he will 
be patriotic, fond of his family and home, and gen- 
erally possessing both; insistent upon having good 
schools; a regular newspaper-reader, interested in 
every subject, and always interested in politics. Being 
fond of travel, he and his family are to be met in any 
quarter of the globe. In all his characteristics the 
typical Indianian awaits portrayal in literature. 

A new author, who has written sympathetically 
and with appreciation of the early people in Indiana, 
is Miss Alexander. In a story by this journalist of 
Candle Lit Days, which she calls Judith, there is a 
reminiscent strain which will help to preserve memories 
of that past. 

Without previous announcement or heralding of lit- 
erary skill, Elizabeth Miller issued the stor>^ of The 
Yoke. The book differs entirely from the others pro- 



Letters and Art in Indiana 389 

duced by Indiana authors, and is another illustration 
of the variety of subjects chosen by this group. The 
scenes in The Yoke were of the Orient and life of the 
Nile. It at once created a stir and arrested attention. 
The same region and people are delineated in her 
latest drama, The City of Delight, a tale of the siege of 
Jerusalem. 

Besides the stories of Indiana already mentioned, 
there are Millard Cox's The Legionaries and Miss Krout's 
Knights in Fustian, which are both interesting tales 
of the Civil War as it affected Indiana. In both 
stories, there are correct pictures of the localities 
involved in the struggle, and the incidents are true 
to history. 

Enoch WilloMghhy, by Mr. Wickersham, is a novel 
of decided interest. Lucy Furman's Leadings and 
A Sanctified Town and Anna Nicholas's An Idyl of 
the Wabash are stories of provincial characters and 
village life. They are more analytical than the stories 
of some of the writers mentioned and show an ob- 
servation and knowledge of character, and of the 
people and places depicted, that is inimitable. They 
write sympathetically, and show a touch of the 
characteristic Hoosier humor. 

Indianapolis has produced many volumes of interest 
by authors who have written only occasionally. It 
would be impossible to name all of them deservedly 
in a chapter like this, but sketches and stories from 
Mrs. Judah, Mrs. Alice Woods Ulman, Mrs. Locke, 
Mrs. Eaglesfield, and others have interested many read- 
ers, and the same may be said of occasional authors 
in Bloomington, Fort Wayne, Evansville, and other 
Indiana cities. It has been claimed that Richmond 
alone offers one hundred ! 



39° Historic Indiana 

It is no part of the intention of this chapter to give 
extended mention of each individual author who has 
written on Hoosier soil. Only enough are mentioned 
to illustrate in part, the development in this direction 
and the reason for the fame that the State has acquired 
in authorship. 

Some of the most famous writers of Indiana, in 
history and fiction, have passed from the scene, and 
their place is secured by the work they have left. 
The young novelists who occupy the stage have the 
assurance of a sympathetic appreciation by the public. 
Conscientious work will improve their art, and the 
style will be more finished when there is less haste 
to publish. Psychological insight, more intense inner 
life, finer artistic conscience, less materialism will ap- 
pear in their writings as character is deepened by 
culture and the experiences of life. 

There is a dramatic quality in the stories by Hoosiers 
which has been very successfully utilized in the re- 
production of these romances on the stage. Ben Hur, 
Beaucaire, The House of a Thousand Candles, Alice 
of Old Vincennes, Brewster's Millions, and When 
Knighthood Was in Flower may be cited as examples 
of this adaptability. In a greater degree this dramatic 
talent is shown in the plays produced by William 
Vaughn Moody, Booth Tarkington, Wilbur Nesbit, 
and George Ade, which have delighted audiences in 
England and America season after season. 

If the novels produced by Indianians have shown 
little of the keen sense of humor which is characteristic 
of the native Hoosier, that trait has certainly appeared 
in Lincoln's drolleries, in Riley's dialect stories, in 
McCutcheon's cartoons, in George Ade's satires, and 
in the prose comedies of Hermann Viele. The native 



Letters and Art in Indiana 391 

Hoosier cannot be called vivacious or joyous in tem- 
perament, but for whimsical humor, and a keen 
enjoyment of by-play and anecdote, he has always 
been noted. All of these humorists show the par- 
ticular kind of dry wit, told with a long face, and 
told on one's self rather than miss a joke, that is so 
characteristic of Hoosierdom. Odd characters, the 
weaknesses of a local capitalist or political celebrity, 
a "greenie from the New Purchase," have always 
been touched off by the wag of the town. And now 
this same droll way of putting things has come into 
print from this group of native Indianians. In Ben 
McCutcheon's newspaper stories, in Wilbur Nesbit's 
verses, in the late John DeFrees's editorials and Orth 
Stein's fanciful sketches, in Simeon Ford's drollery, 
in George Ade's fables, in James Whitcomb Riley's 
poetry, in Gillilan's tales and in John McCutcheon's 
cartoons, with their explanatory foot-notes, we see 
the gentle cynicism, the naturalness, the freshness 
which belongs to youth and to life, in communities 
where- opportunity is unhampered and impulses are 
spontaneous; where there is a sense of sheer fun, and 
a wholesome ironic way of dealing with the faults 
and frailities of the people. We see the quick obser- 
vation of passing events, the knowledge of human 
nature — especially of American people — ^that was 
demanded of stump speakers in the backwoods times, 
and of which the early preachers were not guiltless. 
When kindly Mr. Howells, who knows his American 
so well, and who has a keen scent for everything of 
every sort in literature, came upon George Ade's first 
productions he recognized at once, through all of the 
slang, that a new spice had been added to life. In an 
extended review he declared this conviction, and said : 



392 Historic Indiana 

"Both Mr. Ade's touch and material are authentic 
and genuine. The sense of character which so richly 
abounds, without passing into caricature, in these pictures 
of unerringly ascertained, average American life, has 
enabled him to go straighter to the heart than any former 
humorist. In Mr. Ade the American spirit arrives, puts 
down its grip, looks around, takes a chair, and makes 
itself at home. It has no question to ask, none to answer. 
There it is, with its hat pushed back, its hands in its pockets, 
and at its feet the whole American world. The author 
posts his varying people in their varying situations without 
a word of excuse or palliation for either, in the full con- 
fidence that so far as you truly are American you will 
know them. He is without any sort of literary pose, and 
his sarcasm is of the frankest sort." ^ 

The plays by this author fill the same position; 
indeed, The County Chairman and his other comedies 
surpass any of the Fables which won Mr. Ade's audience 
for him. This same droll way of looking at life's 
frailities, and showing the peculiarities and failings 
of the people and parties, which we have noticed as 
being so characteristically Western, finds another 
exemplification in cartoonist McCutcheon. Of his 
work it may be truly said as was remarked of Punch 
that his aim was to provide relaxation for all, fun 
for all, without a spice of malice or a suspicion of 
vulgarity, humor without a flavor of bitterness, satire 
without reckless severity, and nonsense so laughter- 
compelling as to be absolutely irresistible from its 
very absurdity. It may be an humbler mission to 
tickle the midriffs of men than to labor for the sal- 
vation of their souls. But both are legitimate vo- 
cations. The world laughs too little anyway, and 

' Howells, William D. 



Letters and Art in Indiana 393 

when we consider the vast influence of the pictured 
lesson, in catching the attention and driving home 
a truth, when an editorial is skipped, we realize the 
mission of the cartoonist in fashioning opinion and 
the importance of such a career. "You have a great 
teacher out here," said a New York divine of this 
cartoonist, "a militant force against sham, hypocrisy, 
pretence, and folly." John McCutcheon shows ready 
invention, vigorous if not careful drawing, and odd 
conceits, with an intelligent grasp of facts and events; 
all infused with conviction, and rich humor, which 
makes him a great power against dishonesty, social 
pettiness, and demagogy. "Never malicious or brutal, 
he hits hard but always fair." This group of young 
men have always been accorded attention not only 
because of their Hoosier drollery, but because they 
know their clientele, and the people respond to their 
portrayals. 

More than a passing mention must be made of 
another form of expression of thought. As we have 
noticed, public speaking, in an early day on the frontier, 
was the easiest way of reaching the public. Before 
there were many books issued, oratory was cultivated 
as an art, among people of Southern extraction, who 
were the first settlers in Indiana. Stories are told of 
young attorneys and politicians rehearsing their 
speeches in the forests, and learning to round their 
periods as they journeyed on horseback from one 
court town to another. The backwoods voters were 
fond of pitting one political candidate against another, 
while they sat about on newly felled logs. There 
were no canvasses or nominating conventions in those 
days; candidates brought themselves out, and the 
settlers voted for the man who captured their ballot 



394 Historic Indiana 

by his off-hand oratory. Public debate on rehgious 
and poHtical questions would draw the people from 
twenty miles around. 

Indiana's famous political leaders were all orators, 
each possessing his own personal style. Vice-President 
Hendricks, Henry S. Lane, Vice-President Colfax, 
Governor Morton, Daniel Voorhees, were representative 
of the different types of effective speakers during 
the Civil War period. 

Commenting on the little that President Benjamin 
Harrison has published, it was very justly remarked 
by a critic that "the most finished orator in American 
political life to-day is not dependent upon book- 
writing for a literary reputation." Mr. Harrison's 
oratory was, no doubt, the model of the best form in 
public speaking of his time. Thoughtful, logical, 
clear, unimpassioned, and convincing, his addresses 
may be read now with an interest second only to 
hearing them delivered. 

In discussing modern political orators, Mr. Reeser 
said in an interview: "I have reported the speeches 
of most of the representative men and feel entitled 
to write of present-day speakers, and I must say of 
another Hoosier, in the language of a New York 
journalist, that 'as a picturesque, rapid-fire orator, 
the East has nothing to compare with John L. Griffiths 
of Indiana.' " 

Some of the literary addresses prepared for public 
occasions by men and women of Indiana in recent 
years, and many of the club papers, deserve to 
rank with the published essays of the country. As 
the essay is pre-eminently the product of meditation 
and leisure, it could hardly be expected that the 
industrial State of Indiana should up to this time 




Benjamin Harrison. 

From a photograph by Clark, Indianapolis. 



Letters and Art in Indiana 395 

excel in that form of literary expression. Nevertheless, 
the work of Arthur Middleton Reeves, Oliver T. 
Morton, Judge Baldwin, Charles R. Williams, and 
others, with a number of papers by members unknown 
to fame, give such evidence of a just regard for literary 
values, a skilful use of language, a play of imagination, 
and withal a vigorous way of setting things forth, 
that their publication would add more to Indiana's 
claim for recognition in real literature than her score 
of popular novels. No one, unfamiliar with this class 
of productions in the State of Indiana, can rightly" 
estimate the degree of virile, thoughtful study and 
discussion which goes on among the people. This 
certainly prepares the men and women of the common- 
wealth for authoritative opinions of affairs and an 
enjoyment of the literary productions of others. As 
Lowell has said, "their obiter dicta have the weight 
of wide reading, and much reflection, by people of 
delicate apprehension, and tenacious memory for 
principles." 

It is' interesting to recall in this connection that 
there were clubs in Indiana before it was a State; not, 
perhaps, in their present-day form, but men on the 
frontier who had literary taste, or those with wishes 
for intellectual improvement, banded themselves to- 
gether for an interchange of thought, and to practise 
the expression of opinions. Evidence of the existence 
of these primitive clubs is found in an old record that 
in a diminutive cross-roads hamlet, which never even 
attained the size of a village, "a polemic society was 
organized which was strongly attended by debaters 
from Weaver's neighborhood east of the river, and 
Judge Clark's neighborhood in Warren County. At 
one time there appeared to be a strong probability of 



39^ Historic Indiana 

a lyceum and academy being established there, but 
a few cabins and a small frame house soon brought 
the village to its culminating point, and it was in 
a few years entirely gone."^ A half-century ago, 
clubs took the form of debating societies, mock 
legislatures, and lyceums. 

The members of these imitative assemblies assigned 
themselves counties and discussed the measures that 
came before real legislatures, and not infrequently 
with more intelligence and spirit than the august 
body that they represented. It is said that they 
elected a governor as often as they wanted to hear 
an inaugural address, which was sure to be humorous 
and full of local hits and personalities. These sham 
legislatures were in vogue from 1824 to 1836, and 
were revived again in '42 and '43. 

A form of literary endeavor customary during the 
middle of the century was the lyceum. Besides the 
papers and addresses by the members there was 
generally maintained a lecture course. During the 
succeeding period came the rise of the modem club. 
The writer has never belonged to a club, but feels 
assured, from an interested observation of others' 
enjoyment of such associations, that in Hoosierdom 
at least they have been a decided impulse in letters, 
art, and music. Many of these organizations have 
inaugurated movements for local improvements, for 
general culture, the spread of an interest in art, for 
historical remembrance, and for civic reform. 

In Indiana, it is claimed, was formed the first 
woman's literary club in the United States. It was 
founded at New Harmony by the brilliant Frances 
Wright. The satirist may throw his little shaft of 

> Cox.Sanford C, Recollections of the Wabash Valley, chaptev xxv. 



Letters and Art in Indiana 397 

wit at clubdom, and at these satires the members 
themselves may laugh, even more heartily than the 
uninitiated, for they know all the vulnerable points 
in such associations ; but the truth still remains, that 
the interchange of thought, the intellectual stimulus 
from such contact of mind with mind, has proved 
itself desirable and valuable, and worthy of wider 
adoption, rather than of lessening the number. 

Within later years there were created in Indiana 
two State federations of these clubs, which have now, 
very happily, been consolidated. This union has 
endeavored to assist in many different measures of 
progress within the State. It has advanced legislation 
and influenced public sentiment toward civic improve- 
ment, for the establishing a juvenile court, for the 
child labor laws, for pure food regulations, and home 
economics. The Federation is a real dynamic force 
in the commonwealth. Among other measures em- 
anating from the union of literary clubs, none have 
proven more encouraging to the whole people than 
the passage of the law in 1899 creating the Library 
Commission to promote the development of public 
libraries in all of the towns. This commission is also 
to help in the organization, give training to library 
workers, supply lists of desirable books, and secure 
statistics from all the libraries. Since the creation of 
this valuable commission, libraries have more than 
doubled in numbers, and, what is encouraging to 
future efforts, they are all on a permanent basis. 
The board has established a system of travelling 
libraries for the districts where there are no local 
ones, or where students need books on special subjects. 
Indiana has reason to pride herself on the awakening 
of interest in the library movement. Over fifty towns 



39^ Historic Indiana 

have shared in the Carnegie fund for the buildings, 
while other cities have built for themselves beautiful 
homes for the books which are provided by public 
assessment. 

Whether as a medium of literary expression or 
as representing the personal political interests, the 
newspapers of Indiana have always had a large cir- 
culation and commanded an influence not easily 
overestimated, when considering the development of 
the State. The most influential journalists have 
helped to mould public opinion; nor have these men 
and women held their mission in light esteem. In 
addition to presenting the current events, the editors 
of Indiana's best papers have striven to make their 
publications representative of the best writing available 
to the State. In all the years that are past, local 
literary talent has found the columns of the newspapers 
open to its efforts. Editors have also shown a belief 
in the truth that a man who maintains a wholesorne 
tone in the daily press serves his country well ; hence 
the moral tone has been conserved. Editorial writ- 
ing certainly exhausts a disproportionate amount of 
energy for the ephemeral fame it secures, as compared 
with other forms of literary labor. As the veteran 
editor Mr. Samuel Morse expressed it, at the close of a 
nonsense rhyme: 

" And thus for more than thirty years I worked 
But all was written for the day, 
And ere the day was done 
It found its straight and certain way into oblivion." 

Elihu Stout is credited with establishing the first 
newspaper in Indiana Territory, in the year 1804, at 
Vincennes, which was then the capital. It was called 



Letters and Art in Indiana 399 

the Indiana Gazette and, after many vicissitudes, still 
flourishes under the name of the Western Sun. Through 
his publications, his public spirit, and his fine character, 
Mr. Stout wielded a wide influence for half a century. 

The number of newspapers increased slowly, as 
new counties were organized. The story is told of 
one of the earliest sheets that it was printed with 
swamp mud used for ink, and run off on a cider press. 
The editor complained that the lack of mails made 
it difficult to gather enough news to issue a newsy 
paper! The paper on which the earliest journal was 
printed was often brown wrapping paper. Sometimes 
it was printed only on one side of the sheet. After it 
had been read, the subscriber would return his sheet 
and have it printed on the reverse side the next issue. 
There was little currency in those days, and the edi- 
tors often advertised that they would forgive debts if 
produce was brought to the sanctum. Maple sugar, 
jeans, tow-linen, oats, chickens, com meal, firewood, 
and coon skins or deer hides were solicited in pay- 
ment of arrears, "before winter set in." Articles 
advertised in these early newspapers included knee- 
buckles, spinning-wheels, flint rifles, buckskin and 
saddle-bag locks. Notices of murders and kidnapping 
by the Indians were among the local items of the day. 

Besides the usual titles of Journal, Times, Register, 
or Express, some of the names given to the weekly 
papers published in wilderness towns had the flavor 
of frontier life. The Broad Axe of Freedom, The Whig 
Rifle, The Coon-Skinner, The Pottawattomie, and Miami 
Times live only in the treasured files of public libra- 
ries, but they once passed current as regularly as the 
uncertain mails would permit. 

In his reminiscences of Brookville, Mr. Johnson tells 



400 Historic Indiana 

this story of early journalism: The newspaper then 
published in the town was called the Brookville En- 
quirer. Robert John was the editor, and subsequently 
there was associated with him I. N. Hanna, a sprightly 
and talented young man. The editors, however, soon 
got at loggerheads. During the ensuing Presidential 
campaign, Robert John was for John Quincy Adams 
and I. N. Hanna was for Henry Clay. An editorial 
would, therefore, come out for Adams, followed by 
another signed "Junior Editor" for Clay, creating 
considerable sensation among the politicians of Brook- 
ville- — and indeed all the citizens were politicians. 

If one is tempted to feel that a difference of opinion 
on political subjects is eternal, he should contemplate 
the peaceful demise, within a short period of each 
other, of the great newspaper combatants at the 
capital, the Journal and Sentinel. Both were historic 
organs, dating from older papers established in the 
'20's, and representative of their respective parties. 
For many decades they were ably edited, and were 
a reflection of the sentiments and principles of the 
two great political parties that formed their constit- 
uency. For years they fought the party battles with 
energy and virulence. The Sunday edition of the 
Journal, under the editorship of Miss Anna Nicholas 
of late years, was a model family paper. The cause 
of the passing of the Sentinel and Journal is perhaps 
not obscure, and is certainly an interesting indication 
of a new phase of party politics in the State. The 
notable editors had passed from control. The Dem- 
ocratic party has for several years been divided in 
its convictions on public policies, and probably did 
not sustain a party organ. The Republicans have 
grown more independent of party control and they 




The Daughter of Chief Massaw. 
Prom a sketch from life by William Winter on the Miami Reservation. 



Letters and Art in Indiana 401 

read independent papers. How much personal in- 
difference of candidates and private financial reasons 
mingled in allowing the two journals to be submerged, 
is not told, but, as the Lafayette Courier said in its 
requiem, 

"It is impossible to note the passing of the old-timers 
without regret, for they recall a vigorous journalism and 
bring back the days of intense political rivalry, when 
loyalty to party was second only to loyalty to country. 
Times have changed, and doubtless for the better. We 
have more independence now in the newspapers, but there 
is no gain-saying the statement that the old days were 
interesting." 

The record of brilliant talent which has been em- 
ployed in Indiana journalism would make a long 
roll of distinction. Journalists received due honors 
in their day, and their interesting careers form part 
of the history of their respective fields of labor. There 
is a great temptation to make personal mention of 
individuals, but their life's story should have a volume 
to itself. Nor is there a dearth of good work through 
the State at present. At the capital, the literary 
ability of those regularly engaged on some of the 
papers has never been excelled. 

The State takes a commendable pride in its writers 
on scientific subjects. Beginning with the scientists 
at New Harmony, who joined David Owen in his 
community experiment in the wilderness, and since 
then, there have always been scientific men in Indiana 
who have made valuable contributions to the literature 
of their especial branches. Some of these men were 
born in the State, and others, coming from elsewhere, 
have identified themselves with the history of Indiana. 



402 Historic Indiana 

Their useful labors have been within the State, and 
their national recognition located them in this common- 
wealth, and has reflected honor upon it. Most of 
these scientists were members of the faculty of some 
of the colleges. Indeed by far the largest part of the 
intellectual development of the State has been through 
the labors of its teachers in the schools and colleges. 
Many of these men and women have published critical 
and historical works, and others the results of their 
original investigations. It could only be a list if all 
these books were mentioned, but they represent the 
patient research, the scholarship, and literary skill 
of the best trained minds in the State. They are 
honored and honorable within its borders. 

The monographs published by the State Historical 
Society, the scientific societies, and the educational 
bodies are of a high order of literary merit, sound 
scholarship, and of national importance in the 
knowledge they impart on the subjects treated. 

Hoosier books may be more widely known than 
the pictures painted by Indiana artists, but there 
has been no literary work done that is better than 
the artistic work done by the present-day "Hoosier 
Group" of painters. The efforts of the pioneers were 
naturally directed to perpetuating the features of 
their loved ones; consequently the early artists of 
Indiana devoted their talents to portrait-painting. 
Later an occasional one, like George Winter, or Jacob 
Cox, ventured into the delineation of Indian life, or 
the landscapes about them. In the frontier life, the 
painter was a person apart from the everyday world. 
It was regarded as little short of lunacy for a man 
to attempt to live by art, but if he would, then the 
neighbors pointed him out as a celebrity; even if 



Letters and Art in Indiana 403 

lack of patronage kept him indigent. General Wallace 
tells us in his Autobiography of his father's commands, 
when he showed an early predilection for art, which 
the family feared would become a passion: 

'"You must give up this drawing. I will not have it. 
If you are thinking of becoming an artist, listen to me : 
In our country art is to have its day. The day may not 
come in your time. To give yourself up to the pursuit 
means starvation.' 'But Mr. Cox' — 'Oh, yes,' he replied, 
'Mr. Cox is a good man, but he had a trade to fall back 
upon — a shop to help him make ends meet. I suppose 
you do not want to be a poor artist — poor in the sense of 
inability as well as poverty. To be a great painter two 
things have always been necessary — a people of cultivated 
taste, and education for the man himself. You have 
neither, ' " ^ 

The extinguishment of the beautiful dream left him 
disconsolate. And thus the artistic yearnings of the 
youthful Lew Wallace, like those of many another 
frontier boy, were quenched by his discouraging 
environment. "I resolved to give up the dream," 
he says, "still it haunts me. At this day even, I 
cannot look at a great picture without envying its 
creator the delight he must have had the while it 
was in evolution." ^ 

In this story we have revealed to us the repression 
of the artistic temperament in the life of many a 
frontier youth. The early painters had only self- 
training, and it may be said felt their way toward the 
light. The pathos of the isolated artistic nature, far 
away from any atmosphere of encouragement, could 

• Wallace, Lew, Autobiography, page 50. New York, 1906. 



404 Historic Indiana 

scarcely be depicted by brush and pencil. The work 
of these men, and those who immediately followed 
them, is interesting as a portraiture of the times, and 
as examples of the state of art "before the war." 

After the painters of pioneer days, the Munich 
and Paris schools were attended by students from 
different towns in Indiana. Some of them remained 
abroad, and others settled where there was more 
encouragement and patronage. They reflected credit 
on the State of their birth wherever they were, by 
the quality of their productions. To those who came 
back to Indiana, well trained in their art, the comnion- 
wealth is now indebted for its enviable position in 
the Association of Western Artists. They are known 
throughout the country as the Hoosier Group, and, 
while differing individually, there is a certain kinship 
in the products of their brush. They paint the things 
about them, the hills of Brown, the citizens of the 
towns, the drooping beeches of the wood, the bit of 
upland from their own studio window, a homelike 
landscape just out of town, or the gray beach in front 
of their summer cottage. The Hoosier Group have 
succeeded too. They have maintained their ideals 
for the encouragement of art within the State; they 
have secured an appreciative patronage, and they 
command the attention of students who are to become 
the painters of the future. 

Indianapolis, being the capital and the centre of 
things in many ways, has always had successful artists 
who have led in the effort to create a distinct oppor- 
tunity for the development of the talent about them. 
A very interesting fact in connection with the growth 
of art in Indiana has been the occurrence of little 
detached groups of men, outside of the capital, as 




A Miami Indian. 

Sketched from life by William Winter on the Miami Reservation. 



Letters and Art in Indiana 405 

in Madison, in Muncie, and in Richmond, who have 
worked along their own Hnes, and have come into an 
appreciative recognition, wherever their canvases have 
been shown. These men paint scenes which have the 
very breath of the woods; and the coloring in their 
pictures is a joy to the possessor. In the blending of 
realism and idealism, they are very happy. They 
feel and express the sentiment of their own beloved 
landscapes. An instance of the art impulse occurring 
in the solitary individual in the provinces is in the 
career of Amelia Kusner Coudert, the noted miniature- 
painter. Bom in Terre Haute, w4th no primary teach- 
ing to guide her impulse, she felt, as she said, that 
she could paint. While studying in New York, she 
produced some extraordinary work, which afterwards 
attracted attention in London, when exhibited there 
under the patronage of Sir John Millais. Immediately 
the young artist's success was assured, until now it 
may be said that Mrs. Kusner Coudert has painted 
miniatures of most of the crowned heads and celeb- 
rities of Europe. 

In a notice of Western artists by Mr. Dickerson it 
was very correctly stated that the late Chicago ex- 
hibition revealed the fact that, if one were to omit the 
work of the women painters, he would deprive the 
exhibition of some of its best art. Indeed, what some 
have regarded as the best painting would be omitted; 
for In an Old Gown, by Miss Martha S. Baker of Indiana, 
not only received an honorable mention at the recent 
Carnegie exhibition, but was purchased by the Munic- 
ipal Art League of Chicago for its permanent collection. 
The same statement regarding women's work was made 
at Indianapolis exhibitions. The paintings in oil and 
water-color by artists whose names we recall at random. 



4o6 Historic Indiana 

as Izor, Steele, Woods-Ulman, Hendricks, Goldsworth, 
Robinson, Comingore, Rehling, Birge, King, Morian, 
Wilson, and many others equally good, show evidence 
of real talent. The illustrated parchments by Evaleen 
Stein, the illustrations by Virginia Keep and others, 
the modelling by Helen Hibben and Clara Barth 
Leonard, give evidence of serious work being done by 
the young women in Indiana. 

Public taste in the West, art critics say, is grow- 
ing appreciably discerning. Picture-buyers are slowly 
being educated to confidence in Western picture- 
makers. They are learning to regard what an artist 
creates, riot where he creates it. This growth in creative 
power, accompanied as it is by the increasing self- 
confidence of the possible purchaser, encourages the 
Western artist. 

Most of the exhibitions of art in Indiana towns 
have been the results of the efforts of the women in 
those communities. These collections wx^re intended 
to stimulate the latent artistic talents of students, 
and for the general pleasure and information of the 
public. They also afford an opportunity for possible 
purchasers to show their appreciation of the work 
exhibited. There is scarcely a city in the State but 
has its circle for the study of the literature of art, 
and that study is carried on by the local literary clubs. 
The town of Richmond has a popular organization, 
with three thousand members, whose membership 
fee of fifty cents each sustains an annual loan ex- 
hibition of great merit. At a late exhibition. Otto 
Stark won the Foulke prize with a beautiful landscape, 
and Justin Gruelle and Dorothy Morian received 
honorable mention. In the prize offered by the famous 
"Richmond Group," Anna Newman was first, and 



Letters and Art in Indiana 407 

Girardin and Holly had honorable mention. Raymond 
White received recognition for his portrait carved in 
ivory, and Miss Overbade for excellence in design. 
This association is given as an example of the forces 
that are working for the elevation of the whole people, 
in matters relating to art, and for the encouragement 
of local artists. 

In the spring of 1903, the Hoosier Group of artists 
assembled an exhibit in Indianapolis consisting solely 
of the work of Indiana painters "contemporary and 
retrospective." This collection made it very evident to 
the visitor that the springtime of art had already 
dawned upon the State; that the patient, persistent 
work done by the men born within its bounds had 
nursed the feeble impulse toward artistic expression, 
by brush and pencil, until the State could now take an 
honorable place in the field of art. 

While this exhibit may not have been so stirring 
as a military review, it was a greater source of pride 
and congratulation. The gentle arts of peace had 
brought honors to the State, not attainable by war. 
It was a noticeable fact that there were so many 
canvases that one would like to live with. The sub- 
jects chosen were never morbid, or the inspiration of a 
degenerate nature. The coloring was pleasing, natural, 
and there was little straining after sensationalism. 
Lovely woods were pictured by Bundy and Conner and 
Girardin and Ball and Nordyke. There were great 
portraits by William M. Chase, T. C. Steele, and others ; 
marines by the illustrious Richards; sea pictures and 
landscapes by such favorites as Forsythe, Gruelle, 
Adams, Stark, Forkner, and Love; genre and figure 
paintings by Henry Hosier, Stark, and many others 
whose gentle scenes and charming coloring live in 



4o8 Historic Indiana 

the memory when the name of the artist has sHpped 
from recollection. The water-colorists and illustrators 
also made a most interesting contribution. As noted 
in the catalogue, "the point of great interest in the 
exhibition was this: that the body of this work was 
done by the natives of Indiana in Indiana, who love 
the State and love art, and who feel and know that 
here as well as anywhere art can be created; and 
they venture this ambitious effort to, as far as possible, 
prove the fact." Mr. Steele continues to preach this 
truth, by the beautiful pictures which he brings up 
from his summer studio in Brown County, and J. Otis 
Adams sends his canvases from Brookville to take 
first prizes at the Exhibition of the Western Society of 
Artists. The names of Vance, Weisenberger, Wheeler, 
Walker, Reeves, Riess appear on the lists among the 
resident artists who are showing new canvases, and 
winning new laurels as the seasons go by. 

Indianapolis is easy of access from all parts of the 
State and if an endowment should be given to the Art 
School at the capital, which would enable the directors 
to offer scholarships to young students who would be 
attracted to such a centre, it would give a helpful 
impetus to the study throughout Indiana. 

The books that have been written by Indiana 
authors have attained greater fame, perhaps, than 
the pictures of her painters, because the printed form 
of expression is more easily disseminated to the 
multitude. But it is very certain that the Hoosier 
painters have produced beautiful work, and have fully 
shown the development of the artistic impulse in the 
commonwealth. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

EDUCATION IN INDIANA 

IN the very earliest dawn of Indiana's history, when 
there were only a few families at each of the 
scattered French military posts, the only instruc- 
tion given was by the French priests. In 17 19, Father 
Marest wrote back to his superior, ' ' as these people 
have no books and are naturally indolent, they would 
shortly forget the principles of religion, if the remem- 
brance of them was not recalled by these continued 
instructions. We collect the whole community in 
the chapel and after answering the questions put by 
the missionary, to each one without distinction of 
rank and age, prayers are heard and hymns are sung." 
In after years when there was a resident priest, an 
effort was made to teach the children to read and 
write, but the happy-go-lucky frontier Frenchman 
resisted mental effort even more than he avoided 
physical toil. We are told that their written language 
was much worse than their speech (which was tolerable 
French) . All that they knew was handed down from 
father to son. They had no education. There never 
was a school in the territory until during the American 
occupation. In 1793, Father Rivet held what was 
probably the first regular school in Indiana; it was 
in Vincennes. There is record of a little school in a 

409 



4IO Historic Indiana 

settlement in Dearborn County three years later. 
After the Americans gained control of the territory", 
and settlers began to come in from the East and South, 
the children were at first taught in the homes. Colonel 
Cockrum recalls, in his Pioneer History of Indiana, 
that in the very first years of settlement, when there 
was such great danger from Indians and wild beasts, 
the teacher was employed to go to the houses and 
spend about one third of the day with the family in- 
structing the children. In this way, with six families 
he could give three lessons each week to all of the 
children. These circulating teachers, as they were 
called, did a good work. When it became less dan- 
gerous for the children to pass through the forests 
they would congregate at the home of the family 
most centrally located in the neighborhood, in a 
lean-to built at the side or end of the pioneer's cabin. 
Here if there were enough families within reach of 
each other, one of the mothers or an older sister would 
collect the children of the scattered families together 
and teach them to read and write and "cipher." As 
soon as possible the neighborhood would get together 
and build a log cabin in which to hold the school, and 
a "master" would be "hired" for three months of 
the year. A site was selected near a living spring, if 
possible ; and the memory of drinking the cool spark- 
ling waters from the long-handled gourd which always 
hung by the spring brings back one of the joys of 
childhood. 

Judge Banta tells us in his interesting recollections, 
published in the Indianapolis News, of the old school- 
houses and the buildings which were made to do duty 
as such; he speaks of a school that was taught in 1808, 
in the dwelling-house of John Widner, which house 



Education in Indiana 411 

was almost a fort, having been constructed with special 
reference to making resistance against attacks of 
Indians. 

"Indeed, there is direct authority for the statement, 
that schoolhouses were constructed in Washington County 
with port-holes, for shooting at the Indians, and if in 
Washington County, we have good reason to suppose that 
they were likewise so constructed elsewhere at the same 
time. The first school in Martinsville was a summer 
school on a gentleman's porch taught by Dr. John Morri- 
son. Barns were given up during part of the temperate 
season to the pedagogue and his pupils. Mills were also 
utilized on occasions. The first school ever taught in the 
English language in the town of Vevay was by John Wilson, 
a Baptist minister, in a horse mill. An early school in 
Waynesville, Bartholomew County, was taught by a 
retired distiller, in a blacksmith shop, which school, for 
reasons not stated, was attended by young men and boys 
only. In Spencer County a deserted tannery was utilized. 
In Knox, in Jackson, and perhaps elsewhere, the old 
forts, after the close of the Indian wars, were turned into 
schoolhouses."^ 

Old settlers give graphic pictures of their schooldays, 
in these surroundings. " Pleasing reminiscences come 
before me," said Barnabas Hobbs, "when I think of 
the pioneer schoolhouses. They were made of hewed 
logs and had puncheon floors and capacious mud and 
stick chimneys with great fire-places. They had 
benches without backs or desks, and there were two 
long wooden pins above the teacher's desk on which 
his whips were laid. These were generally well- 
trimmed beech or hazel rods, from two to six feet 
in length- — some well worn and others kept in reserve. 
Teachers were expected to govern on the home plan — 

1 Banta, D. D., in Indianapolis News, 1892. 



412 Historic Indiana 

'spare the rod and spoil the child.'" They believed 
the rod had a twofold virtue. It was not only a terror 
to evil-doers but was a specific against stupidity. 
Beech and hazel rods had a wonderful stirring effect 
on both mind and body. The State at this time had 
no school revenue to distribute, so each voter must 
become a builder. By common consent the voters 
divided themselves into choppers, hewers, carpenters, 
and masons. If any could not report for duty on the 
schoolhouse, they might pay an equivalent for work 
in nails, glass, or boards for the roof. If they neither 
worked nor paid, they could be fined thirty-seven 
and one half cents a day. These school buildings 
were well ventilated, not only by the great open fire 
but from the chinks between the logs. 

Whence came the pioneer teachers? They were 
generally adventurers from the East, or from England, 
Scotland, or Ireland who sought temporary employ- 
ment during the winter, while waiting for an opening 
for business. Some of these were first-class men, and 
they left a lasting impression on the communities. 

Schools commenced then at seven in the summer 
and half-past seven in the w^inter. There was one 
hour at noon and five-minute recesses; fully ten 
hours in school in summer. In the pioneer period 
"loud schools" were in universal esteem. By this is 
meant, that all of the pupils studied out loud. The 
theory was that sound intensified the memory. Boys 
and girls were taught to think in the midst of noisy 
surroundings. In those ungraded district schools the 
younger pupils listened to the instructions and re- 
citations of the older ones and bright pupils stepped 
from one class to another as rapidly as they were able 
to progress. The geography lessons were taught to 



Education in Indiana 413 

the whole school at one time in concert. Many an 
old timer can recall his States and capitals to this 
day, better than his grandson, by humming over 
"Maine — Augusta on the Kennebec River," etc. 
Manual labor was also a part of the school life, for 
the great open fire-places must be kept replenished 
with logs and these must be chopped by the older 
boys of the school who rather enjoyed the reprieve from 
study. 

Mr. Hobbs said : A very accomplished lady teacher 
who came from a bright centre in North Carolina 
taught a summer school in southern Indiana in the 
early days. Many had doubts about her success. 
It was not considered possible for a w^oman to govern 
a school. She had read much and had a happy way 
of illustrating prose and poetry by anecdotes of history 
and biography. She stirred within the pupils a love for 
classic literature, history, and art, and the question was 
settled that a lady could teach school as well as a man. 
The compensation received by the early pedagogues 
was not such as to encourage an over-supply of teachers. 
Judge Banta says in his reminiscences that seventy- 
five cents per quarter was a price quite commonly 
met with as late as 1825, or even later, but the price 
varied. In some sections $1 per scholar seems to 
have been the ruling price, in others $1.50, while in 
a very few instances $2 was paid. Some teachers 
eked out their earnings by chopping timber at night 
and on Saturdays. In many cases, probably a majority , 
the teacher was obliged to take part of his pay in 
produce. Wheat, corn, bacon, venison hams, dried 
pumpkins, flour, buckwheat flour, w-hiskey, leather, 
coon skins, and other articles are mentioned as 
things given in exchange for teaching. At the ex- 



414 Historic Indiana 

piration of the three-months term, says one old set- 
tler, the teacher would collect the tuition in wheat, 
corn, pork, or furs, and take a wagon-load to the 
nearest market, and exchange it for such articles as 
he needed. Very little tuition was paid in cash. One 
schoolmaster of the time contracted to receive his 
entire pay in corn, which, when delivered, he sent 
in a flat-boat to the New Orleans market. Another, 
an Orange County schoolmaster, of a somewhat later 
period, arranged to teach a three-months school for 
$36.50, to be paid as follows: $25 in State scrip, 
$2 in Illinois money, and $9.50 in currency. This 
was as late as 1842, and there were seventy school 
children in his district. A large per cent, of the un- 
married teachers "boarded around," and thus took 
part of their pay in board. The custom in such cases 
was for the teachers to ascertain by computation the 
time he was entitled to board for each scholar, and 
usually he selected his own time for quartering himself 
on the family. In most instances it is believed that 
the teacher's presence in the family was very accept- 
able, for the isolation was always felt in the wilderness, 
and as books and papers were scarce the conversation 
of an intelligent teacher was very welcome. Later 
it became quite common to have a schoolmaster's 
house erected by the district, hard by the schoolhouse, 
for the use of the married masters. 

"A few years ago," continues Judge Banta, "I had 
occasion to look into the standing and qualifications of 
the early teachers of my own county, and on looking over 
my notes I find this statement: 'All sorts of teachers 
were employed in Johnson County. There was the " one- 
eyed teacher," the "one-legged teacher," the "lame 
teacher," the "teacher who had fits," the "teacher who 



Education in Indiana 415 

had been educated for the ministry but, owing to his 
habits of hard drink, had turned pedagogue," and the 
" teacher who got drunk on Saturday and whipped the en- 
tire school on Monday.'" A paragraph something like 
this might be truthfully written of every county south 
of the National road, and doubtless of every one north 
of it. The lesson this paragraph points to is that whenever 
a man was rendered unfit for making his living any other 
way, he took to teaching. The first schoolmaster of Van- 
derburg County lived the life of a hermit ; and is described 
as a rude, eccentric individual who lived alone and gained 
a subsistence by hunting, trapping, and trading. John 
Malone, a Jackson County schoolmaster, was given to 
tippling to such excess that he could not restrain himself 
from drinking ardent spirits during school hours. He 
carried his bottle with him to school but he seems to have 
had regard enough for the proprieties not to take it into 
the schoolhouse, but hid it outside. Wesley Hopkins, a 
Warrick County teacher, carried his whiskey to school in a 
jug. Owen Davis, a Spencer County teacher, took to the 
fiddle. He taught what was known as a 'loud school,' 
and while his scholars roared at the top of their voices 
the gentle pedagogue drew forth his trusty fiddle and 
played Old Zip Coon, The Devil's Dream, and other in- 
spiring profane airs, with all the might and main that 
was in him. Thomas Ayres, a Revolutionary veteran, 
who taught in Switzerland County, regularly took his 
afternoon nap during school hours, 'while his pupils,' 
says the historian, 'were supposed to be preparing their 
lessons, but in reality were amusing themselves by 
catching flies.' One of Orange County's early school- 
masters was an old sailor who had wandered out to the 
Indiana woods. Under his encouragement his pupils, it 
is said, 'spent a large part of their time roasting 
potatoes.' "^ 

' Banta, D. D., "Early Schools of Indiana." Articles in the 
Indianapolis News, 1892. 



4i6 Historic Indiana 

Thus we see that an odd character who had a little 
learning, or a lame soldier who "had seen some 
schoolin' " in his mother country, or a Yankee tinker 
who could combine some useful trade with a few 
months' teaching the three R's to the frontier children, 
were generally the teachers found in the cabin schools. 
They solicited their pupils from house to house, telling 
or submitting in writing, to the parents, where they 
would hold the school, that they would teach spelling, 
reading, writing, and arithmetic as far as the single 
rule of three. They announced what their charges 
would be, and sometimes added, the discipline 
would be, for being idle, two lashes with a beech 
switch, for whispering, three lashes, for fighting, six 
lashes. The text-books used were not closely graded: 
as may be imagined. The children learned to read 
from whatever book the family happened to possess, 
the Bible, Gulliver's Travels, Pilgrim's Progress, a 
dream book, or the moral maxims at the foot of the 
page in the old blue speller. Colonel Cockrum tells a 
touching story of this dearth of text-books, when 
parents were obliged to cut up a volume and paste 
the parts on boards for the different children of the 
family. A pointed goose-quill was used for the pen 
and the ink for "copy-book work" was manufactured 
from oak balls saturated in vinegar. 

The children walked miles through the forest to 
gain the meagre rudiments of knowledge these ec- 
centric masters might impart to them. This poverty 
of advantage in youth was another pathetic phase 
of the tragedy of the frontier. From Georgia to Mich- 
igan, we may picture to our minds these eager, in- 
telligent youths, rising in the gray winter dawn to 
"do the chores" about the farm and chop the wood 



Education in Indiana 417 

for the cavernous fire-places which required cords of 
wood a day to warm the open house. After their 
early breakfast they trudged through the woods with 
dinner-basket on arm to the little log schoolhouse. 
" In imagination I can still hear the squish, squish of 
water-soaked shoes as their wearers crossed the pun- 
cheon floors to repeat their lessons," writes a pioneer. 
Many a time these pioneer children encountered the 
skulking savages, the wild beasts, or were terrorized 
by snakes, on the way to school. Colonel Cockrum 
relates a true incident in the school-days of Mrs. Nancy 
Gulick, who lived near where the town of Hazleton 
now stands. One of the patrons of the school near 
White River had started out hunting and gone by the 
school to see one of his boys. While there the hunter's 
dogs treed a young panther, not far from the school- 
house. The children went out to see what the dog 
was barking at, and the hunter, on coming up, shot 
it, and told his boy to drag it to the schoolhouse and 
when he w^ent home to take it with him and save the 
hide. -A short time after "books w^ere taken up," 
the teacher and pupils were startled by the awful 
scream of the old mother panther, as she came bounding 
along the way the young one had been dragged. They 
had forethought enough to close the door and put 
the window-bench in place and fasten it there. The 
furious animal rushed up to the carcass of her kitten 
and when she found that it was dead she broke forth 
in terrible screams and howls of lamentation. Looking 
around for something on which to avenge its death, 
she made a rush for the schoolhouse, ran two or three 
times around it, and then leaped on top of it and 
commenced tearing across the roof from side to side, 
as if hunting some place w^here she could get in to the 



4i8 Historic Indiana 

imprisoned teacher and scholars. After a while she 
gave three or four most terrible screams; presently 
the answering screams of another panther were heard 
some distance off. It was but a short time before 
her mate came rushing up ; they gave several screams, 
one after another, and made a rush for the building, 
bounded on the top of it, and for the next half -hour 
kept up a screaming such as the helpless scholars 
and frightened teacher had never heard before. Major 
Robb had several men working for him at that time. 
They heard the fearful noise, and by the direction 
were sure it came from the schoolhouse. Three men 
took their rifles and hurried to the rescue. Several 
dogs had followed the men, and they set up a loud 
barking, which frightened the panthers into a tree 
which stood near the schoolhouse and they were 
soon shot to death by the hunters. 

At night the school children studied their lessons 
and "worked their sums" by the firelight, or the 
feeble flame of a "tallow-dip." This is not alone 
the picture of the conditions which surrounded Abra- 
ham Lincoln's childhood and others known to fame; 
but it was the common lot of all the children in the 
early Indiana settlements, whose lives afterward went 
into the foundation of the sturdy commonwealth. 
They were the men and women who so conscientiously 
laid the foundation for better conditions of instruction 
for later generations of Indiana children. Nor did 
these men and women in after days claim that their 
early years were a time of woe, unmixed with rural 
pleasure. The privations and dangers became in 
memory partly offset by the joys of a vigorous child- 
hood in close contact with nature. They had found 
pleasure in the long walks to and from school. They 



Education in Indiana 419 

had gathered nuts, berries, and acorns by the way. 
The hunting of May-apples, paw-paws, calamus-root, 
or blackberries had often beguiled their footsteps 
from the direct path, to where they knew the biggest 
and best fruits to be lurking. 

" In the fields we set our guileless snares 

For rabbits and pigeons and wary quails, 
Content with the vaguest feathers and hairs 
From doubtful wings and vanished tails. "^ 

Thus, in later life, reminiscences of early trials and 
pleasures seemed almost balanced; and "the good 
old times" became a term of reproach to modern 
degeneracy. 

When the "man teacher" was found to be unne- 
cessary to cope with the muscle and brawn of hardy 
overgrown boys who came for the three months' 
schooling, and the power of personality and gentleness 
was found to be a more efficient civilizer, then women 
often became the instructors. Some of these women 
had a -talent for inspiring their pupils with a love of 
learning which made them invaluable instruments 
of progress and culture in those crude surroundings. 
Many of them were of New England birth, and had 
been thoroughly taught. Often they had received 
their training from a clergyman father whose classical 
scholarship and general culture moulded most excellent 
instructors for the frontier. Some of these intelligent 
women married soon after coming out West and 
their descendants were among the especially en- 
lightened citizens of the State. Sometimes the women 
continued to teach after their marriage, owing to 
the scarcity of good instructors. The little libraries 

» Howells, Wm. D., Poems. 



420 Historic Indiana 

they brought with them were loaned far and wide 
to eager readers, who were starved for good literature, 
just as the people on the frontier are now. 

Although the earliest schools in Indiana were started 
and maintained by the parents who were anxious 
for the development of their own children, the demand 
for popular education was included in the very first 
ordinance for the formation of the Territory. In 
1785, and in 1787, the famous laws passed for 
the government of the Northwest Territory declared 
that "religion, morality, and knowledge being ne- 
cessary to a good government and the happiness of 
mankind, schools and the means of education shall 
forever be encouraged," and provisions were incor- 
porated in that ordinance, setting aside a thirty-sixth 
part of all lands for the maintenance of public schools 
for all the people. This provision was a wise one. 
By the year 1825, it was estimated that the common 
school fund consisted of 680,207 acres valued at $2.00 
an acre. These lands formed the endowment for the 
future means of maintaining common schools, but for 
many years there were no available funds, until the 
broad acres could be sold or a revenue could be obtained 
from them. It was during this period that the little 
"entry" schools, with paid tuition, of which we have 
been speaking, performed their mission for the strag- 
gling settlements. 

In 1807, the Territorial Legislature passed an act 
incorporating the Vincennes University, originating 
the first of those weak academies with the high-sounding 
titles. This "University," according to the language 
of the bill, was to be for the instruction of youth in 
the Latin, Greek, French, and English languages; 
mathematics, natural philosophy, logic, rhetoric, and 



Education in Indiana 421 

the laws of nature and of nations! Special provision 
was made, in the charter, for the education of the 
Indians, The University was to provide all expenses 
for them, including maintenance and clothing, to 
induce them to embrace the opportunity for an edu- 
cation. At the same time, the frontier was so con- 
stantly threatened that Governor Harrison, at a 
later session, earnestly recommended a military branch 
in ever>' school to instruct the youth in defence against 
the savage. Only one Indian is said ever to have 
availed himself of the opportunity of an education 
at Vincennes University! At the time of granting 
its charter, the Legislature gave it authority to raise 
$20,000 by lottery for its establishment. And this 
privilege was used for the next sixty years to main- 
tain the school ! 

When the first constitution was formulated for 
the new State government in 18 16, it included provision 
for township schools, for county seminaries, and a 
State university, ascending in regular order, with free 
tuition and open to all who wished an education. 
None of the lands that had been granted to the State, 
by the Federal Government, for school purposes, 
could be sold before 1820; and actually none were 
sold until eight years later. The legislation from 
time to time for public schools was as advanced as 
in any of the States, but there were no funds to main- 
tain the authorized schools. There were many reasons 
for this, — the sparseness of population, slender school 
revenues from taxation, lack of qualified teachers, 
"opposition of the few and indifference of the many," 
who needed their children to work at the clearing of 
the forest and the planting and gathering of crops. 
Superintendent Cotton reminds us that "the settlers 



422 Historic Indiana 

were busy felling the forest, draining swamps, and 
making homes. They exhausted their time and en- 
ergies, in providing for their families the necessities 
of life, and in baffling malaria. They had no leisure 
for the contemplation of educational problems, and 
the spiritual life had to wait. The day of free schools 
was afar off and illiteracy grew apace." ^ Even the 
elementary schools were left to private enterprise. 

At this very early point in the history of the edu- 
cational affairs in Indiana there occurred within the 
borders of the State the most brilliant experiment 
that could be found on the national soil; that is, the 
schools established at New Harmony, by David Owen 
and William Maclure, which are described in the 
chapter on that socialistic community. From those 
short-lived schools, there went out teachers over the 
whole West, whose influence on education cannot be 
calculated. 

In 1824, a law was passed providing for county 
seminaries and about fifty counties availed themselves 
of the provision, ^but the schools were all supported 
by private tuition fees, and money was so scarce that 
many of the children were not able to attend. The 
prevailing theory of that time, all over the country, 
was that parents alone were responsible for the edu- 
cation of their children; the rights of a child and the 
necessity of the State requiring and providing elemen- 
tary education in its own defence had not yet been 
accepted. It was during this period of half a century 
before the full inauguration of public schools over 
the State that private citizens established those 
academies and denominational colleges which dotted 

« Cotton, Fassett S., Report of Stipt. of Public Instruction, 1904. 
Indianapolis. 



Education in Indiana 423 

all of the districts then populated. These schools 
must be borne in mind, by the student of the State's 
history. They are an enduring testimony to the 
intelligence of the pioneer settlers. They were de- 
termined that their children should have the advantages 
of which they had been deprived, and for which they 
had hungered in their youth, and tried to supple- 
ment by solitary studies. While the conviction ne- 
cessary to the establishment of public schools, for all 
of the youth, was slowly coming to the people, the 
more enlightened men and women subscribed the 
funds necessary to establish what were known as "pay 
schools." There were fully seventy of these seminaries 
opened before the middle of the century. 

It was commonly held, that the various religious 
denominations should undertake the higher education 
of the young and each sect tried to provide a school 
for its own following. Many of these institutions did 
good work for their time, and have passed into oblivion 
with their founders. They served the purpose of 
their- day and generation, and deserve honorable 
remembrance. They were a large part of the up- 
lifting influences of the frontier, and were built and 
supported at great sacrifices on the part of the parents 
of two generations ago. As they have so entirely 
passed beyond the ken of the present generation, they 
must be embodied in every history of the State, or 
due justice will not be rendered to the pioneers' in- 
telligence, and the wise provision for their children. 

These schools educated the men and women who, 
in their turn, established the State universities, the 
public school system, and provided for the denomi- 
national colleges. In that early time many a tow- 
haired youth, barefooted, and with his scanty outfit 



424 Historic Indiana 

tied up in a "meal-poke," kissed his mother good- 
bye and walked the distance to the seminary. In 
his ears rung his mother's benediction, and the father's 
urgent counsel to "get learning while he had the 
chance." At home the father chopped and tilled, and 
the mother spun and wove, to pay the slender price 
charged at these academies for board and tuition. 
The principals and teachers who supplied the thorough, 
if limited, instruction have long since gone to their 
reward, but their place in the annals of the States, 
and in the esteem of posterity, is by the side of the 
self-sacrificing parents. As General Wallace intones, 
for many others, the praise of one, in his autobiography : 

" Step by step Prof. Hoshouer led me into and out of 
depths I never dreamed of and through tangles and ap- 
preciations which proved his mind as thoroughly as they 
tried mine. That year was the turning point in my life, 
and out of my old age and across his grave, I send him. 
Gentle Master, hail, and all sweet rest! Now I know 
wherein I am most obliged to you — unconsciously, per- 
haps, but certainly you taught me how to educate myself 
up to every practical need."^ 

Several of those early foundations have survived. 
Vincennes University, which w^as the first college 
established in the Territory, has suffered throughout 
its history on account of its endowment. First because 
its wild lands were unremunerative, and later because 
of the lottery feature, which hurt it when that form 
of raising funds was no longer approved of; then in 
1830 the Legislature assumed control, sold the land 
grants, and put the proceeds into the general treasury 
of the State ! Thirteen years later the trustees brought 

* Wallace, Lew, Autobiography, page 58. New York, 1906. 




5 -a 

l-i 03 

> W) 

2 ° 

u 

CO 



Education in Indiana 425 

suit to recover their rights, in hopes of resuscitating 
the school; and after years of Htigation and at a cost 
of one third of the sum in attorney's fees, they gained 
their suit, and the school was reopened with the good 
wishes of all who recall its ancient foundation that 
the new century may be kinder to Vincennes Uni- 
versity and bring it greater prosperity. If it were 
called an academy it then might live up to its name. 

The State was still in its infancy and the material 
resources for maintaining the population still un- 
developed, when the first settled district along the 
Ohio River began to establish advantages for higher 
education. In 1827, the Presbyterians, who always 
stood for an educated ministry, made the beginning 
of Hanover College, in a little log cabin at Hanover 
village, on the Ohio River, near Madison. The college 
has continued its existence through a most honorable 
history ; and in the present day attracts many students 
on account of its excellent instruction, high standards 
of scholarship, healthful location, and the marvellous 
beauty of the incomparable scenery which surrounds 
it. Only five years after esta.blishing the college, on 
the southern line of the State, the Presbyterians 
started another school at Crawfordsville. This little 
town was then on the very edge of civilization; but 
Wabash College has had a continuous existence, in 
the little city which has always been known as a 
centre of culture. This school on its beautiful wood- 
land campus welcomed its first students under the 
guidance of Caleb Mills, the man who afterward did 
so much for the cause of public schools in Indiana. 
Wabash College has been most fortunate in its pres- 
idents and through the poverty of the pioneer days, 
the vicissitudes incident to the Civil War, and the 



426 Historic Indiana 

later competition with more richly endowed schools 
has been known as a strong institution sending out 
useful men. It is hoped that the new course to be 
offered in pedagogy will help to raise the standard 
of teaching in the State. 

The Society of Friends, which was always foremost 
in the agitation against slavery, and against oppression 
and ignorance, was among the first to aid in the 
cause of education in the State. Being opposed to 
the support of schools from the military fines from 
the enforced militia system of that day, they estab- 
lished schools of their own immediately. Settled 
in large numbers in the southeastern part of Indiana, 
they established many minor schools as well as Spice- 
land Academy in 1834, the Bloomingdale Manual 
Labor School in 1845, ^^^ 'the well-known Earlham 
College, for both men and women, which was opened 
at Richmond in 1847, ^''^^ ^^^ always stood in the 
front rank. The graduates of this school have been 
a valuable teaching force in many other institutions. 
All these schools, and other seminaries founded by 
the Friends in other localities, at later times, are 
recognized as giving practical and thorough edu- 
cational facilities. 

In 1834, the Baptists founded Franklin College 
under the leadership of such representative members 
as Henry Bradley, Reverends Eliphalet Williams, 
Reuben Coffey, Ezra Fisher, Moses Jeffries, William 
Rees, J. V. A. Woods, and the two brothers. Reverend 
Nathaniel Richmond and Dr. John L. Richmond — 
the latter had already, on his way toward the West, 
lived long enough in Ohio to help establish Dennison 
University. Franklin College was organized as a 
manual labor institute; and fulfilled that provision 




a 

o 

H . 

.2 ^ 

& ^ 

.S o 






Education in Indiana 427 

many years, for most of the students supported them- 
selves by real toil. In an old letter written by a student 
at Franklin in 1842, we get a real breath of the prim- 
itive conditions surrounding the student as he wrote: 

"Dear Brother: 

"I found I could earn 40 cents a day by chopping beech 
timber at 20 cents a cord. So I rolled up my sleeves and 
went at it. I walked two and a half miles to the place 
and every Saturday I earn that much. I want to stay 
on for another term if possible. I never felt the impor- 
tance of trying to get an education before. My landlord 
offers to board me for fifty cents a week, and find every- 
thing and candles in the bargain. I can get shoes for $1.50 
a pair and Mr. Lancherson will make a coat for me for 
$3.75 and take it in old scrip. A cloth coat will not cost 
any more than a jange coat which I am now wearing. I 
want to go to school as long as I can and if you can send 
me the cloth for a coat instead of the money, you can 
send it by the stage coach. I must close now as it is after 
ten o'clock and I have 21 pages to commit for to-morrow." 

This letter, yellow with time and sealed with wafers, 
reflects many of the phases of frontier life and the 
early college environment. During the Civil War the 
patriotic body of students at Franklin responded so 
universally to the call for troops that the college was 
closed for lack of students. Only two pupils, sad 
and regretful, remained within its halls, and they 
were both lame. It was at this time that Dr. Silas 
Bailey, that great man and great educator, resigned 
the presidency. After the war closed, classes were 
resumed and Franklin College is still living and only 
needs larger endowment to make its usefulness com- 
mensurate with the hopes and sacrifices of the long 
roll of good Baptists who have fostered the institution. 



428 Historic Indiana 

The Methodists laid the comer-stone of Asbury — 
now Depauw — University in 1837. Through varying 
fortunes but "all leading to ultimate victories" this 
school still lives. Its influence has been vast within 
the Methodist Church. Like the other denominational 
colleges of the State it is "rich in traditions and in 
the sacrifices that have been made for it, and is firm 
in faith for the coming years." 

As early as 1846 the Fort Wayne Female College 
was opened, but later it became a co-educational 
school and still flourishes at Upland as Taylor Uni- 
versity. 

Moore's Hill College is another of the early schools 
established for both sexes, that still maintains its 
useful corps of instructors and still sends out its army 
of graduates. The Methodists have reason to be proud 
of the history of this school that they founded in 
pioneer times and have continued until now. 

Indianapolis being an inland town was settled 
later than the section where these other schools are 
located and has no college extant that was organized 
before Butler University ; which was founded in 1850, by 
the Church of the Disciples. This school, so beautifully 
located in the environs of the rapidly growing capital 
of the State, and with the record it bears of a useful 
past and vigorous present management, only needs 
the personal interest and an endowment from the citi- 
zens of Indianapolis to make it one of the leading 
colleges of the West. 

In 1840, six brave Sisters of Providence came out 
from France and established the Convent School, at 
Terre Haute, of St. Mary's of the Woods. This school 
has attracted pupils from all classes and many of 
the young ladies of the earlier time went there to 



Education in Indiana 429 

secure the accomplishments not elsewhere obtainable, 
and they still revisit their loved alma mater. The 
school has grown to be a little world w4thin itself, and 
is nestled in the lovely park which gives it its name. 

Terre Haute is also the home of the State Normal 
School and Rose Polytechnic Institute; giving that 
city three influential educational centres. The Poly- 
technic was opened in 1883, and is intended for the 
higher education of young men, especially for the 
profession of engineering. There are over two hundred 
students enrolled. They come from all parts of the 
country and are offered excellent advantages under 
a fine corps of instructors. 

The growth of the Roman Catholic college at Notre 
Dame w^ould read like a fairy story to the members 
across the sea of the order which founded that school. 
No longer ago than 1842, its founder, Father Sorin, 
arrived from France. On a bleak November day a 
boy, who two years later entered as the first student, 
guided the stranger through an unbroken forest to 
the shores of the lake, where there stood a lone cabin 
surmounted by a cross. In sixty-six years, this 
Old World religious society, transplanted to virgin 
soil and adapting itself to new conditions, and the 
New World demands of its following, has planted 
in northern Indiana a vast establishment. This com- 
munity includes a primary school for children, an 
academy for youth, St. Mary's Convent School for 
girls, a theological seminary, and a university; all 
of which are flourishing, and their facilities must be 
constantly increased to meet the demands of the 
people. The imiversity comprises schools of letters, 
science, laws, and engineering, Notre Dame is also a 
church publishing centre, for various influential church 



430 Historic Indiana 

journals and books. Learned writers dwell within 
its walls and the influence of its journalists is inter- 
national. The head of the Order of the Holy Cross 
has now moved the headquarters from France to this 
point. If one is seeking for a marked example of 
the rapid strides made by American institutions, 
and at the same time an instance of how a conservative 
Old World congregation may adapt itself to the spirit 
and progressiveness of the New World, no more striking 
instance could be found than the vast Roman Catholic 
school at Notre Dame. 

Most interesting educational influences have been 
inaugurated at beautiful Lake Winona ; not only the 
Chautauqua summer classes, but the Technical In- 
stitute at Indianapolis, governed by the same people, 
has a most useful field before it as a much needed 
trade school, if its fine location is used as it should be. 

The old Lutheran Concordia School transferred to 
Indiana soil at Fort Wayne, and the Merom College 
in its beautiful surroundings, were both founded before 
the Civil War. There are many schools all over the 
State, such as Culver Military School at Lake Maxin- 
cuckie — the largest school of that kind in the country, — 
the immense schools at Valparaiso, at North Manchester, 
Oakland City, and elsewhere, that are doing excellent 
work, but have been established in later times than 
the pioneer schools of which we are speaking. Those 
mentioned will show the character of the work done 
by the early settlers in the foundations they laid for 
the future generations. In the history of both the 
early and later schools established, "each educational 
institution is replete with examples of heroism and 
self-sacrifice on the part of many faithful friends." 

Of the State schools, Bloomington University was 



Education in Indiana 431 

the first one established after the State was organized. 
The constitution provided for such a college and the 
Legislature authorized its organization. Bloomington 
opened its doors in 1824, with ten pupils and President 
Hall as the only teacher, serving at a salary of $250.00 
a year. He constituted the whole faculty, and if we 
may believe his reminiscences of The New Purchase 
or Seven and a half Years in the West, he felt that a 
Princeton graduate was lost to the world while teaching 
in the wild West. Those were the days when the 
classics were insisted upon, and Greek and Latin 
were the only branches taught there for the first three 
years! To this some of the practical frontier people 
very naturally objected. State politicians were as 
vague in their standards of culture at that time as 
they are still accused, at times, of being. One is 
quoted as declaring that "it was a right smart chance 
better to have no college at all, nohow, if all folks 
had'ent equal rights to larn what they most liked 
best." The common branches were soon added to the 
schedule of dead languages and the institution grew 
apace. Later it became co-educational, added an 
efficient school of pedagogy, was chartered as a uni- 
versity, and it has attained a most honorable position 
among the State schools of the Union. It now has 
nineteen departments, an enrolment of over fifteen 
hundred students, and a brilliant faculty of instructors. 
The members of the faculty of Indiana University 
have made notable contributions to our national 
literature in history, criticism, and science. 

In addition to the establishment of the denominational 
schools and the State University, there were always 
far-sighted men of broad views, who saw that many 
children were unprovided for. Looking into the 



432 Historic Indiana 

future, they maintained with Caleb Mills that in a 
government like ours, the State ought to provide 
free education for every child, sufficient to enable 
him to become an intelligent citizen. This seems 
self-evident truth now, but the movement for common 
schools, supported by taxation, had to be worked out 
in each State separately, and each State in turn has 
had to meet the same objections and the obstructive 
tactics of those who opposed the movement. Mas- 
sachusetts went into the campaign for universal 
education very early in the history of the nation, and 
other sections followed. But after all these years, 
there are still neglected districts where the instruction 
within the grasp of the youth is meagre in the extreme, 
with a corresponding benighted condition of the 
population. In our day, we cannot imagine the war- 
fare waged in the different States against free schools 
in the last century. All the objections now used against 
forward movements like taxation for public libraries, 
or old age pensions, were then in vogue against public 
schools. Some of the arguments were that the in- 
dustrious should not be taxed to support the indolent ; 
that free schools would pauperize the poor and make 
them depend entirely upon government help; that 
people who had no children should not be taxed for 
those who had more than they could bring up ; that 
paternalism was in danger of creeping in; that free 
schools would make education too common! And 
some objected to people being made benevolent by 
law. These and other arguments were brought forward 
by short-sighted people in each State, as it swung 
into the line of progress. It seems strange now to 
read of mass meetings being held to oppose the move- 
ment, but they were, and speakers harangued the 




student Building, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. 

From a photograph. 



Education in Indiana 433 

crowds with all these arguments to try and stem the 
tide of opinion which had set in so strongly favorable 
to general education. For years pamphlets were 
circulated and long newspaper editorials were written 
against the proposition. Indiana was no worse than 
many other sections of the Union. Indeed she was 
in advance, for from Territorial times there had been 
statutes' anticipating the future needs of the West. 
The Ordinance of 1787, Territorial laws, and the first 
State Constitution, as we have seen, provided for 
township schools, seminaries, and colleges, but there 
being no revenue from taxation the schools during 
all these years and for many years longer depended 
wholly on the sentiment of the community. Not- 
withstanding the advanced citizens had established 
such numbers of "pay schools" there were so many 
children growing up in ignorance, whose parents 
either could not or did not send them for instruction, 
that the agitation for the tax levy was begun. It 
was claimed by careful investigators in 1834, that 
only one child in eight between five and fifteen years 
of age was able to read. Even the capital did not 
have a free school until 1853, and that one was kept 
open only two months, and this in spite of many 
noble characters in different parts of the State, working 
for a change. At many places these men and women 
were seeking to awaken public sentiment in favor 
of free schools. The laws were on the books but the 
masses were ver>^ slow, as in all the States, in taxing 
themselves for the laws' fulfilment. 

While affairs were at this stage, a New England 
settler, Caleb Mills, who had come out to act as a 
professor at Wabash College, became the grand leader 
of the forces who were agitating for effectual legis- 



434 Historic Indiana 

lation. Over the signature, "One of the People," 
he addressed a series of six most urgent and convincing 
messages, directly to the Legislature, under the head- 
ing, Read, Circulate, and Discuss. These pamphlets 
were issued four 3^ears in succession. Mr. Mills set 
forth earnestly and plainly in the most pungent and 
telling manner, the illiteracy prevalent, because of the 
lack of common schools, and the responsibility of the 
legislators to formulate plans for their organization. 
He reminded them that to attend the schools then 
extant, it was necessary to pay tuition, which many 
were utterly unable to do. That owing to this fact 
only one in three of the children of school age attends 
any school, "that the constitution has committed to 
your charge the primary schools, the only institution 
to which nine tenths of the rising generation will 
ever have access." Like other legislative bodies they 
were slow to act on self-evident propositions. Friends 
of general education in different sections of the State 
rallied to the cause, and common school conventions 
were held in many localities. In almost ever}^ county 
the newspapers published communications from local 
leaders, presenting the arguments in favor of free 
schools. Many pamphlets on the subject were cir- 
culated for the general enlightenment of the people 
and to enlist more ardent interest in the immediate 
attention to the question. One of these circular letters, 
issued in 1847, expressed the hope that the free common 
school system may throw its broad mantle over the 
thousands of children of the poor — a helpless class of 
innocent sufferers — to shield them from infamy. 

As a result of these combined influences, after two 
years of further delay, a referendum was ordered by 
the Legislature. The records tell us that at the fall 



Education in Indiana 435 

election of 1848, after a voter had deposited his ballot, 
he was asked by the judge of the election, viva voce, 
"Are you in favor of free schools?" When the vote 
was counted it was found that 78,523 had voted for 
free schools, and 61,887 against them! Notwith- 
standing this opposition of the short-sighted element, 
the voters of Indiana had endorsed free schools, by 
a majority of 16,636. But the 60,000 non-progressives 
must be kept in mind, if we are to appreciate the 
heroic work done by the really active friends of uni- 
versal opportunity. This element was a dead weight 
that the more intelligent portion of the community 
carried, until they had succeeded in elevating Indiana 
to her present educational eminence; and are still 
carrying while combating the inertia of the ignorant 
and indifferent. Since the victory for no slavery in 
the new State had been won, when Indiana came 
into the Union, this triumph for free schools was the 
most important result reached at the polls by the 
commonwealth . 

Even after this popular endorsement another session 
of the Legislature passed without that body devising 
any measures for relief! In 1849, the campaign was 
renewed. Again Caleb Mills addressed the Assembly, 
urging the members to have the independence to 
enact, and the wisdom to devise, a system that would 
be an example to the sister States, adding further 
valuable statistics of the prevailing conditions and 
outlining a remedy. 

Following all these efforts of educators and citizens, 
the Legislature, guided by Governor Whitcomb, passed 
an act, giving the people of the State power to call a 
convention, to draft a new constitution. Robert 
Dale Owen, both as member of this convention and 



436 Historic Indiana 

afterwards as a member of the State Legislature, 
was efficient in promoting the legislation. Professor 
John Q. Morrison, as a member of this convention, 
and an enlightened educator, proved to be a guiding 
hand in the educational provisions secured to the 
people in that instrument. 

The new constitution, after being submitted to the 
people, went into operation in 1852. It contained 
the long desired authority for the actual establishment 
of a free school system, and the necessary enactments 
followed. This blessing had not fallen easily into the 
lap of the State. Detailed mention of the battle for 
popular education is made, that the present generation 
may not forget that their present extensive privileges 
did not come to them without a struggle. The lesson 
of this phase of the State's history may be a warning 
against obstructing future progressive measures for 
the general advancement of the whole people, as they 
arise. The labors of Mr. Mills, :Mr. Owen, Mr. Mor- 
rison, and the liberal thinkers who worked with them for 
the great educational system have enabled Indiana to 
take rank among the very foremost States in the Union. 
Under the new law if the local tax w^as too meagre 
to supply funds, it was augmented from the State 
fund. The township became the political and social 
unit, a fact of the largest significance in the school 
system; and of equal importance was the fact that 
a head had been provided for administering the law 
in the State, a Superintendent of Public Instruction, 
under whom the work of intelligent organization has 
been carried forward from that time. Step by step 
Indiana has developed a most admirable free school 
system, that is comprehensive and, in time, will 
be adequate. New provisions are annually suggested 



Education in Indiana 437 

for its betterment, from kindergarten to university. 
Industrial instruction is yet to be made an inte- 
gral part of all schools. Some of the country districts 
still need more school days and the advantages of 
centralization, which it is hoped may become uni- 
versal. One of the chief factors in the development 
of opportunities for all the children of the State, 
has been the high grade of service that Indiana 
has enjoyed in her State Superintendents of Public 
Instruction. If one is skeptical regarding the sum 
of good citizenship he should feel encouraged by the 
records of the incumbents of this position. Notwith- 
standing it is an elective office, and the candidate 
changes with the political party in power, as a matter 
of fact, each of the parties has from the beginning 
nominated good men. After these men are elected, 
however much the individuals differed in their ideas 
of what was most needed, it is noted that each superin- 
tendent has stood for progress in general and each 
has emphasized some great idea in particular and 
our present system is in this way the work of our 
successive State Superintendents and State Boards of 
Education. 

In reporting on her inspection of the Indiana schools. 
Miss Shaw says that there is a general level of ex- 
cellence. The average rural school is far above the 
visitor's expectation. They are better than others 
because most of the teachers are better. And why? 
The State Superintendent neglects no one. The 
monthly letter to each teacher keeps them alert. There 
are uniform examinations and teachers are encouraged 
and invigorated by the system of teachers' meetings. 
Under the very representative State Board, and the 
Superintendent of Public Instruction in Indiana, the 



438 Historic Indiana 

plans are laid for the expenditure of over ten millions 
and a half of money annually. The Superintendent 
must study the problems to be solved for the best 
advantages of the schools all over the State. The 
Monthly Bulletins, a system originated by Superinten- 
dent Cotton and issued from his office to the teachers, 
are intended for their inspiration and encouragement, 
and are alone invaluable to the upbuilding of the 
school system. 

As the public schools developed, means of making 
them more and more adequate to the growing demands 
of the people gradually caused the organization of 
Teachers' Institutes, Reading Circles, Associations, and 
Normal Schools. For the better training of teachers 
was, and still is, the greatest need felt in making common 
schools effective. 

In 1870, the State Normal School at Terre Haute 
was opened and there are a large number of indepen- 
dent normal schools, at Danville, at Angola, Marion, 
Rochester, and elsewhere, established for training 
teachers, which have a long enrolment of attendants. 
Many of the colleges also have included pedagogy in 
their curriculum. At Valparaiso the normal school 
has been merged into a college which attracts vast 
numbers. There are now over four thousand students, 
it being one of the busiest centres of young life in the 
West. An improvement in these schools is assured 
by the enactment of a law empowering the State 
Board of Education to act as a teachers' training 
board, regulating the system of normal school in- 
struction and determining what schools shall be 
accredited a place in the system. The Superintendent 
says that there are more than eight thousand students 
now in normal schools and colleges, preparing to 



Education in Indiana 439 

hasten better schools. In the cities, training schools 
are conducted in connection with the high schools. The 
Indiana Kindergarten Training School at Indianapolis 
does invaluable work for the training of teachers for 
primary work, and they, in turn, are missionaries for 
the extension of better preparation of teachers. 

Indiana takes the enlightened position that the 
special State schools for the blind, deaf and dumb, 
feeble-minded, and soldiers' orphans are to be on 
the same plane as for the other children of the State ; 
they have been instituted, not as charities, but as 
parts of the great scheme of public education. In- 
dustrial training is combined in all of these institutions 
with the regular school work. 

The developments of the school system to meet the 
needs of the people are most interesting. Among the 
most important innovations is the consolidation of 
the weak country schools into strong central ones. 
The little red schoolhouse at the crossroads makes 
a sentimental picture in verses about old school-days, 
or iu the biographies of aspiring politicians; but it 
has always been a sorry substitute for the advantages 
supplied by the city schools. The tax affording only 
six months of schooling with one lone teacher trying 
to instruct twenty or thirty classes — very often there 
being but one pupil in a class; the single, ungraded 
school held in an uncomfortable room, remote from 
any one home, has always been the real truth about 
the condition of educational surroundings in the 
solitary schoolhouses. These isolated buildings with 
their poverty of equipment, and limited advantages 
of instruction, long seemed to the patrons the only 
possible way of managing district schools; but the 
leaders in educational matters had visions of better 



440 Historic Indiana 

ways. The disadvantages under which the small 
isolated rural schools labor were recognized in the 
earliest days and were set forth by William Maclure 
as early as 1827, and again by Caleb Mills when he 
was the State Superintendent in 1856. The attention 
of the Legislature was called to this handicap of the 
country pupils, by State Superintendents Geeting and 
Jones. Finally in 1899, the General Assembly passed 
a law, recognizing the right of township trustees to 
transport pupils at public expense to a stronger 
central school. But it was soon seen that trustees 
must be required by law to do this, if the cause is 
to advance rapidly; for the backward districts, which 
need it most, will always have those who oppose any 
innovations. This was accomplished in 1907, when 
the Legislature required the township trustee to dis- 
continue weak schools averaging twelve pupils or 
less, and permitting it when there w^ere fifteen or 
less; and when a school was thus abandoned, made 
it his duty to provide means of transportation for the 
pupils to a central school. Superintendent Cotton is 
largely responsible for the present flourishing state of 
this beneficent arrangement ; and it is greatly due to his 
influence that so many pupils now enjoy the advantages 
of better school surroundings. Statistics of the results 
of these efforts for consolidated schools are most en- 
couraging, but the figures are misleading; for they are 
outgrown before they can be published. At present 
over seventeen thousand children of the State are 
transported to better equipped schools than could 
be maintained in the little crossroads schoolhouse, 
attended by less than a dozen pupils. Nearly one 
thousand wagons are used for the purpose of carrying 
the pupils, the daily cost amounting to one dollar 




3 C 



Education in Indiana 441 

and eighty-four cents per wagon. Over thirteen 
hundred small schools have been combined into five 
hundred consolidated schools, with the number always 
increasing. Seventy-five counties of the State have 
tried the plan to their satisfaction. These children, 
thus transplanted, find themselves in better buildings, 
under better teachers, longer terms of schooling are 
possible, and the tax rate is no higher. " Being a farmer 
myself," said one trustee, "I believed that centraliza- 
tion was the farmer's opportunity to get as good schools 
as the village and towns have." Said another, "it is 
cheaper to run the hacks than it is to run the abandoned 
schools, and the educational advantages are many 
times greater in the central school." 

One of the greatest advantages of consolidation to 
the country pupils is the possibility of industrial 
training, of laboratory work, of access to a library, 
and of instruction in music, drawing, and nature 
study. Special teachers may be employed in those 
subjects. The plan has been tried long enough, says 
the State Superintendent, to prove that a township 
school at one central point affords an opportunity for 
thorough work in these desirable branches. The 
elevating influence of such a school is felt to the very 
extremities of the township. It awakens educational 
aspirations of no mean power, stimulates efforts, and 
arouses mental energies and capacities. Such work is 
impossible in small isolated schools. The object toward 
which the friends of improved rural educational 
advantages are working is, that each township in 
Indiana shall finally have a complete system of schools, 
centrally located, with kindergarten, primary, and 
grammar grades capped by a four years' high school. 
In these schools industrial training, which includes 



442 Historic Indiana 

agriculture, manual training, cooking, and sewing, is 
to be coupled with the regular literary course. This 
reasonable plan will equalize the advantages for 
education between the city and country youth; and 
there will be less incentive for them to desert the 
farm for the towns and better results at less cost 
surely will follow the centralization of rural schools 
for which Indiana educators are now contending. If 
instruction in agriculture and home economics is 
given in the schools, the youth who are to be the 
farmers and homemakers can afford to remain longer 
in attendance at school. Technical instruction in 
their home school for the practical work which is to 
be their career will retain them in the country where 
they may be growing more proficient in their vocation 
instead of drifting into the forlorn ranks of unskilled 
labor. 

For many years after free schools were fully in- 
stalled throughout the State, there was no law making 
attendance compulsory, and truancy, or very in- 
different regularity was common, as in other States. 
In 1897 ^^d iQoi. laws were enacted compelling 
attendance at school until the age of fourteen; and 
the same law provided that books and clothing should 
be furnished when there was necessity. Only one 
written notice of habitual truancy to the parent or 
guardian of a child is required in any one year. The 
parent who violates the requirements of the law may 
be fined or imprisoned. " Truancy being the primary 
school of crime," the State recognizes that it is the 
part of wisdom to demand the regular attendance 
of the twenty-five thousand children who have been 
gathered in by the truant officers, and still greater 
vigilance in carrying out these laws is of imperative 



Education in Indiana 443 

importance to the State. As manual training and 
industrial instruction become multiplied there will be 
less work for the truant officer, less crime to be pun- 
ished. When the schools have trained enthusiastic 
teachers, and are equipped to fit their pupils for the 
active duties of life, while pursuing their regular 
school course, then it may be said of the boys and 
girls in country and town, as it was said of the little 
Graysville, Indiana, school, "All of the children in 
this community attend school regularly — boys and 
girls who are far beyond the compulsory age limit. 
Not only so but they dispense with their recess and 
part of their noon hour and devote that time to hand 
work, and the children in this school passed the 
strongest examination in the regular lessons of any 
children in the country." Leaders of the educational 
work in Indiana are working for a time when in all 
of the high schools there will be commercial, industrial, 
or agricultural courses coupled with the academic 
studies ; then the State may expect the other half of its 
boys who enter, not to drop out of high school as they 
now do; and the girls to "dignify the office" of house- 
wife, when domestic economy is required for gradua- 
tion along with history and political economy. Moving 
steadily, if slowly, along these lines, the Indiana schools 
are advancing in practical utility. Between sixty and 
seventy-five towns have already instituted manual 
training and domestic instruction. Beautiful equip- 
ment produces most gratifying results at Fort Wayne, 
Madison, Indianapolis, Greensburg, Richmond, and 
other cities. 

The county schools have made even greater strides, 
proportionately. In an agricultural State like Indiana, 
industrial training will, in the very nature of things, 



444 Historic Indiana 

be very largely instruction in agriculture; this should 
lead the children back to rural employment and 
ambitions. It is interesting to note the efforts that 
are being put forth by educators to enlist the interest 
of the youth in the principles of agriculture. In pre- 
senting a course for teachers to pursue, State Superin- 
tendent Cotton clearly showed the object of this 
training when he said that the course will direct the 
boys and girls to an intelligent study of agriculture 
which will inspire in them a respect for honest labor, 
and show them there is a demand for brains on the 
farm. The country schools are clearly combining 
artistic, scientific, and manual training in a most 
practical and attractive way. The average layman 
in the cities, who has not had his attention called 
to the progress being made, would be surprised and 
delighted with a walk around the school garden at 
Delphi, in Carroll County, where each pupil is given 
six feet of mother earth to plant and cultivate in a 
practical way; where an orchard affords practical 
lessons in fruit raising, a tiny plantation of nut trees 
an experiment in forestry, and the ornamental grounds 
an example of landscape gardening. An inspection of 
the laboratory work in the county schools of Randolph, 
Henry, Johnson, and other counties would awaken 
the citizens to the studies that are being carried on 
regarding soils, seeds, injurious insects, and processes 
of cultivation. A visit to the centralized schools in 
Wells County at Bluff ton, Lima, and in scores of other 
centres would surprise the visitor who sees for the 
first time the bench work, cabinet pieces, and pottery 
made by the industrial classes ; and learns how number 
work, language lessons, and nature study are taught 
from the practical experiences in the garden plot. 



Education in Indiana 445 

The enthusiasm in the corn clubs has been mentioned 
in the chapter on agriculture. The local trustees in 
the townships and instructors from Purdue University 
have given their assistance in encouraging these 
innovations, and in helping the teachers. 

School gardens and lawns have been introduced 
in some town schools, giving great pleasure, and are 
instructive in homemaking and a decided impulse 
to civic improvements. 

If the study of elementary agriculture, in the schools, 
is in its infancy, advanced instruction in that science, 
and all of the others, has been well provided for in 
the great State Agricultural University at La Fayette. 
Instruction was begun at Purdue University in 1874. 
It was founded as Indiana's land-grant college, auth- 
orized by Congress in 1862, when thirteen million 
acres of government land were set aside for the es- 
tablishment of industrial colleges throughout the 
Union. The act stated that the schools to be organized 
were for the promotion of agriculture and the mechanic 
arts, without excluding other scientific and classical 
studies. Purdue is one of sixty-five institutions which 
have been organized in different States and Territories. 
Purdue University at present has an annual enrolment 
of about fifteen hundred students with a faculty 
numbering over a hundred. The experimental farm 
and campus comprises one hundred and eighty acres 
of beautiful land with about twenty-five buildings 
crowded for room to accommodate their students. 
The equipment is constantly being added to, in the 
effort to keep pace with the demands of the times. 
Scientific and agricultural progress, in this day, ad- 
vances by leaps and bounds, so that these schools 
are always in urgent need of facilities. The legislatures 



446 Historic Indiana 

of adjacent States have provided much more boun- 
tifully for their coUeges affording similar lines of 
instruction. This parsimony has handicapped every 
State college in Indiana. Private bequests and en- 
dowment is the only way in which Purdue University 
can be kept up to date, if the General Assembly of 
Indiana does not assume a more vigorous support 
of the institution. The United States Experiment 
Station for Indiana is an organic part of Purdue Uni- 
versity, and the very important Farmers' Institutes 
of the State are conducted by the board and faculty 
of this college. The different engineering departments 
are attended by students from every part of the nation. 
The Mechanical Engineering School has attained an 
international reputation as one of the foremost schools 
of its kind in our time. 

The lives of the teachers of Indiana, past and present, 
in the schools and colleges of the State, would be an 
interesting history of the culture and progress of 
thought in the commonwealth. The men and women 
of this profession have been the greatest factors in 
the State's advance, the most important element in 
training its citizenship. 

In tracing the history of Indiana's schools from the 
wilderness cabin through the days when all instruction 
was by paid tuition in private schools and semin- 
aries and when this period was followed by the brave 
struggle of the more enlightened for a system of free 
public schools, we have arrived at the summit. In 
the two State universities the Indiana public school 
system is logically rounded out. In three quarters 
of a century, a complete chain of progressive depart- 
ments of instruction from kindergarten to universities 
were established. The State may well claim that it 




Oh 



a 
Pi 



S 



Education in Indiana 447 

has not worked in vain. The outhne for the necessary 
system to be maintained and strengthened has been 
estabhshed. Indiana has taken her place among the 
foremost States in her provision for popular education. 
In time the backward districts will be brought up to 
the general standard; and supplementary legislation 
will increase the efficiency of the laws for all of the 
communities. A union of councils between legislators 
and educators, and harmony between the academic 
and technical universities should keep Indiana steadily 
in the front rank of educational affairs. 

Owing to the central location of the commonwealth, 
Indiana colleges should play an important part in the 
development of interstate community of interests. In 
speaking of the value, to an Eastern man, of taking 
a part of his schooling in the middle West, that 
astute observer, Edward S. Martin, recently said: 
"The West can make a strong claim to be the most 
instructive section of our country. It can be argued 
with much force that the ideas that are most potent 
in our national life come from there, that the spirit 
of the West is the dominating American spirit, and 
that to comprehend the West and live in fellowship 
with it, is an immensely valuable detail of American 
education." ^ 

» Martin, Edward S., in an editorial article in Harper's Weekly. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE QUALITY OF THE PEOPLE 

WHAT do you value most of all that you have 
won?" was asked of a frontier woman. 
Without an instant's hesitation she replied, 
"The standards by which generations of my family 
were bred." The ruling class among the early settlers 
of Indiana were of this mind. It was the severing of 
these ties, as well as personal loneliness, that added to 
the pathos of their isolation on the frontier. 

No one regrets the extreme democracy of the West. 
This social freedom, permitting superior individuals 
no matter what their ancestry was, to rise to their 
appropriate level, infuses hope into the soul of both 
the humble of native birth and the Old World immi- 
grant. It develops a vigorous, efficient, and capable 
population, but it inevitably brings down the average 
of culture, for several generations. Social conditions 
in Indiana are typical of the Republic. New people 
of varying traditions have come into all the States, 
faster than they could be assimilated and at the 
same time the general tone of information and culture 
be kept up to the standard of the most enlightened. 

Of this better class are the people who are recognized 
as being the responsible, representative citizens, who 
have been the leaders of thought and action in the 
first century of Indiana's history. No one has given 

448 



The Quality of the People 449 

more fitting recognition of this element, which has 
controlled the State in its short past, than the editor 
of the Dial when he said : 

"There is in the middle West, indubitably, a social 
temper which seeks the best in things of the mind and 
of the spirit. We have fallen heir — legitimately enough, 
surely — to the idealism of the New Englander. Perhaps 
the twin spirits of idealism and shrewd utilitarianism 
which were pretty clearly to be distinguished in our Yan- 
kee forebears have fused in some degree in us, so that at 
one angle we seem to have lost one, and at another angle 
the other. Yet they both remain, modified but active, 
and the result is a social life in reality finer, stronger, more 
wholesome, at least more vitalized, one may say without 
offence, than in that older region. Nowhere in America 
are ideas more welcome. Nowhere are they examined 
with more self-control. We are the most teachable of 
communities and we are, beneath everything, the most 
aspiring. If we are naive, if we lack urbanity, finish, it 
is because we are fresh, exuberant, and very young. But 
those .who come to know the life of the West come to 
realize that its humanity is large and deep, and that its 
grave and kindly spirit will bear us far. The quality of 
moral and intellectual earnestness, that is, the main current 
of the life of our region, is pretty generally underestimated. 
Yet it is the factor, one believes, of greatest importance 
in the life of America to-day. It is well for the West to 
recognize this, not boastfully, but with a sense of all it 
involves." 

To say that Indiana differs in enlightenment in 
any respect from the other States is not in accordance 
with the facts. The dominant race, the master force 
in its civilization, has remained the Anglo-Saxon 
strain which was attracted by the fertile acres. They 
came over the mountains from the English families 



45° Historic Indiana 

settled in the sea-coast colonies and later from the 
other States. Colonel Cockrum, who knew so many 
of the old settlers, says: "As a whole the people who 
were the pioneers of this State were from the best 
families of the countries from which they moved; 
intelligent, brave, hearty, and honest." The change of 
habits, the new environment, the very fertility of 
the soil, the remoteness from older civilizations, the 
untrammelled spirit of the frontier, produced a variant 
of the type, without doubt; but the racial character- 
istics, and relative social position, have been main- 
tained. Indiana, like the other States, has had her 
share of immigration from foreign countries. There 
was the handful of French who were left of the settle- 
ments at the posts on the Wabash, the early accessions 
of Scotch-Irish, the Swiss vineyard-planters who set- 
tled along the Ohio, and a wave of European refugees, 
fleeing from the ill-fated conditions in their father- 
lands during the Napoleonic wars. Later there were 
hordes of Irish and German laborers, who were imported 
into the central counties to work on the canals and 
other internal improvements. Then gradually, as the 
years passed, and factories were established, and the 
coal mines were developed, all nationalities joined 
the original population; but there has been com- 
paratively little intermarriage between the educated 
people of the English strain and later arrivals. They 
were welcomed and they prospered, but they became 
one with the communities without these alliances. 
It has required all of the energies of the progressive 
citizenship to assimilate these accessions. Ere the 
whole population could become enlightened, self- 
controlled, and delicately considerate of others, there 
was a new immigration at hand. 



The Quality of the People 451 

In Indiana, education was early regarded as the 
"deepest hope of all ultimate, attainable qualities," 
and the public school and university system was 
established. There are few congested centres of 
population in the commonwealth, and there is work 
for all who are able to do manual labor, but it is a 
slow process to bring these accessions up to the average. 
The cause of backward conditions in material improve- 
ments which are the outward manifestation of progressive 
people seems to be the force of inertia in these un- 
cultured classes. This inertia also reaches into the 
class elected to ofhce, and prevents desirable State 
and municipal legislation. The shiftlessness and ig- 
norance of this minority are what hampers the progress 
toward well-kept cities and farms, but this fact is 
common to all of the States. 

Formerly, the term Hoosier meant a backwoods- 
man, to a resident on the Atlantic coast. As late 
as the Centennial exhibition in Philadelphia, two 
gentlemen of birth and lineage from the Wabash, 
both descended from old colonial stock, and both 
of commanding presence, personally, overheard an 
Eastern woman say: "Well, I 've seen the glories of 
the earth here. I 've seemed to travel from the Oc- 
cident to the Orient, but before I go home I should 
like to see a genuine Hoosier." The humor of the 
situation was too much for our unintentional eaves- 
droppers. The two gentlemen, with habitual courtly 
grace, turned, and bowing said, "By your leave, 
madam, we present ourselves as humble citizens of 
Indiana." Disillusioned, one more denizen of the 
East went home after a friendly interstate chat 
with the gentlemen — with a fairer appreciation of 
Hoosierdom. 



452 Historic Indiana 

By the part played in the Civil War, Indiana placed 
herself, as it were, among the States. The gallant 
record of her troops, and the conspicuous ability of 
her war governor and citizens, revealed to the East 
the position the State had gradually grown to occupy, 
while they had still been thinking of the Wabash as 
the frontier, and Hoosiers as benighted. In 1906, 
the New York Sun called attention to the fact that 
Indiana was the only State which had a solid delega- 
tion of college-bred men in the two houses of Congress. 
Massachusetts had theretofore ranked highest in this 
particular. The Indiana men, however, have an 
unbroken record of collegiate education. 

It is admitted that the West in general has "con- 
tributed to manners a certain frankness of demeanor, 
a certain unquestioning sincerity in the attitude of 
man to man, which has a beauty, no less than moral 
value, quite beyond appraisal. In course of time 
the manner developed from this fundamental trait 
of frankness, and coupled with real refinement, should 
become the most gracious and altogether charming 
that American life has yet evolved." Nevertheless, 
"vulgarity is an eighth deadly sin," as Lowell says, 
"and worse than all the others put together since 
it perils your salvation in this world." But Europeans 
and Chinese criticise the manners of our older States, 
with condescension; and mayhap it will always be 
that the older civilizations will be critical of the 
younger. 

Indiana people of culture especially resent the pro- 
nouncement of one of their prominent politicians, 
that ' ' Indiana achieves the true meaning of the common 
people. It is the home of the average American." 
They claim that such a statement belies history, that 



The Quality of the People 453 

such an assertion proceeds from the demagogue who 
is fond of referring to the people, but never claims 
to belong to them unless he is running for office. 
Gentle birth has been the heritage of the real leaders 
of thought and life in the Hoosier State from its begin- 
ning. It is interesting to note in Oliver Smith's 
reminiscences how many gentlemen with talents and 
manners he found among the pioneers who continued 
in public life until his time. Speaking of some, he 
tells of their "energy that never slumbered, their 
integrity that was never questioned, their high con- 
ception of morality and religion, coupled with social 
qualities of the first order." Again he introduces to 
us a group of which one was ' ' a courteous and polished 
gentleman," another " is a fine scholar and well-read 
man," and another "a distinguished specimen of the 
last generation." 

General Lew Wallace says of his father, who was 
one of the pioneers of the State : 

"Added to the graces, he had a pleasant voice and 
manner more stately and gracious than we meet to-day; 
the urbane sweetness to which we give the name of high 
breeding. There were fewer books then, and they were 
of the best, and constant familiarity with them gave a 
stateliness of speech and a certain dignity that comes of 
keeping good company. They dined with Horace and 
supped with Plutarch, and were scholars without knowing 
it."i 

An early settler tells of a new book that was reported 
in a neighboring settlement: "At last there came a 
day when my father could spare a horse from the 
plow, and I went in quest of the book, which was 

' Wallace, Lew, Axitohiography. New York, 1906. 



454 Historic Indiana 

found, borrowed, and read with a zest now unknown, 
for it was one of Sir Walter Scott's immortal stories." 
The gentle influence of these cultured families was 
a welcome leaven in frontier neighborhoods ; and 
later, as Mr. Nicholson has said, "the older Indiana 
towns enjoyed in their beginning all the benefits 
that may be bestowed upon new communities by a 
people of good social antecedents. In no old com- 
munity of the seaboard had loftier dignity been 
conferred by long residence or pioneer ancestry, than 
in Indiana." ^ Hon. Hugh McCulloch came out 
from New England and settled in Indiana in 1833, 
and knew the whole State well; of it he says: 

"Indianapolis was fortunate in the character of its 
early settlement. Such men are rarely found in any 
place. Their superiors in intelligence, in enterprise, and 
moral worth can be found nowhere. What was true in 
regard to the early settlers of Indianapolis was also true 
of those in many other Indiana towns. Nor have their 
successors been degenerate. No State has been more 
prolific of superior men than Indiana." 2 

Writing of one of the older towns, George Gary Eg- 
gleston said : "I have before me a long list, which 
I forbear to copy, of men who made Madison, or its 
near neighborhood, their home at that time, and 
who were conspicuously distinguished in State and 
nation for their intellectual achievements."^ 

The careers of public men who have place in the 
pages of history cannot be touched upon in a volume 

1 Nicholson, Meredith, Hoosiers. New York, 1900. 

2 McCulloch, Hugh, Men and Measures of Half a Century, page 72. 
New York, 1888. 

^ Eggleston, George Cary, First of the Hoosiers. Fenno, New 
York, 1903. 



The Quality of the People 455 

like this, but their abiHties and their attainments 
must be considered in any estimate of the State's 
average of citizenship. Running over the Hst of gov- 
ernors, senators, and congressmen from the earliest 
time, the Indiana officials will be found representative 
of American ability, occupying those positions in each 
decade. A State which has furnished a President 
and three Vice-Presidents to the United States, who 
have all "magnified the office," and done honor to 
the commonwealth in those exalted positions, may 
lay claim to sending out representative men. The 
numerous Cabinet officers called from Indiana, in 
the course of the history of the country, have shown 
the quality of the State's public men, one of whom 
served as Secretary of the Treasury for three differ- 
ent Presidents. The rank of Indiana diplomatists at 
foreign courts and consulates has been second to none, 
and they have rendered distinguished service to the 
nation in these positions. As naval and military 
commanders, of high and low degree, no State has 
surpassed the officers of Indiana. Nor were any 
men braver fighters than the Hoosier regiments. 

In letters and the arts there are men whom all 
delight to honor, and her faithful educators compare 
with any other section of the country. Scientists she 
has the results of whose investigations are watched 
for all over the world. It may be safely claimed 
that there is not a capital city of any other State in 
the Union whose citizens have maintained, through 
a quarter of a century, a club of representative men 
that could surpass the well-known Gentlemen's Lit- 
erary Club of Indianapolis. In the national fame of 
its membership, the interest of the papers and dis- 
cussions, the quality of its literary work, and the 



456 Historic Indiana 

breadth of view and wide reading of the men who 
for many years past have served on its programs, 
there is no commonwealth but would be honored in 
possessing such a circle. The same might be claimed 
for similar circles in the other cities of Indiana. 

It is not alone the men and women who have 
remained and labored within the State that show 
the quality of its people. The men who were bom 
there, but who have gone out from Indiana, in earlier 
or mature years, also denote the character of her 
settlement. John Hay, one of the greatest premiers 
the United States has had, was bom at Salem, Indiana, 
and his writings and great diplomatic career reflect 
credit on the State of his birth. John B. Eads, the 
civil engineer of the Mississippi jetties and constructor 
of St. Louis bridge, came from the Hoosier State. 
Joaquin Miller, the poet of the Sierras, first looked 
upon nature from the hills of southern Indiana, and 
the young poet William Vaughn Moody was born in 
New Albany. Dr. Billings, who manages the libraries 
of all Manhattan Island, was born at Rising Sim, 
Indiana. Hiram Powers, the sculptor, was from 
this State, and William M. Chase, the noted painter, 
who encourages and inspires, aids and cheers, the 
rising artists who come up to New York, was bom 
in Johnson County, and began his art work in Indi- 
anapolis. Henry Mosler, the talented genre painter, 
now claimed by Cincinnati, is a native of Indiana. 
General Joseph E. Johnston, Generals Carrington and 
Bumside of great military fame, and Admiral Glisson 
and Commander Herndon were bom in the White- 
water Valley. General Lawton has added laurels 
to his name and that of the State ; and Erasmus 
Weaver serves the nation, as well as his native common- 



The Quality of the People 457 

wealth, in the councils of war and defence. Robert 
U. Johnson, long the editor of the Century Magazine, 
was bom in Indiana, and Mr. Roswell-Smith went 
from the State to found that periodical. Another 
editor who honors the field of Eastern journalism, 
is George Gary Eggleston, also from the Hoosier State. 
Gharles Denby gave the most valuable years of his 
life to the service of the nation as its representative 
during those trying years in the Orient. John W. 
Foster, though living in Washington, keeps closely 
in sympathy with his native State, and no man of 
the present day has rendered more brilliant service 
to his country in diplomacy. George B. Williams 
of Washington, now interested in international shipping 
contracts, went from Indiana to formulate Japan's 
revenue system. The work of Harvey W. Wiley in 
the United States Agricultural Department, for pure 
foods and the advance of science, reflects great credit 
on the Hoosier State, of which he is a native. Judge 
Landis of the Federal Court is a member of a large 
family who have served Indiana. International re- 
cognition of Charles R. Henderson as an authority 
on measures for social betterment, in charities and 
corrections and kindred works, is also a recognition 
of an Indiana man, and the State's interest in those 
matters. Professor John W. Coulter's pre-eminence 
in botanical research means a credit mark to an 
Indiana family, as well as the work in the same line 
done within the State by Dean Stanley Coulter, Pro- 
fessor Charles Barnes has distinguished himself in the 
same science, and the Director of Dresden's great 
orchestra is Clark of Indiana. 

The membership of the " Indiana Society of 
Chicago" shows that the Hoosier State has contributed 



45^ Historic Indiana 

judges, authors, poets, artists, bankers, journalists, 
and engineers of note and signal ability, to Chicago's 
commercial and intellectual life. Those of Hoosier 
birth in that city are too many to enumerate; but 
they are known to all, as now occupying places of 
honor and great responsibility in that busy centre 
of the nation. 

The list of past and living Hoosiers who have added 
to the history of achievement throughout the Re- 
public might be lengthened indefinitely. But enough 
have been mentioned to emphasize the statement 
that the character of the population of the State, how- 
ever plain and simple, is not the "common people." 
Indiana produces men and women of marked ability, 
who, whether they go out from her borders to do 
their life-work or remain identified with the history 
of the State, show that they are more than the 
"average American." 

In writing of his exhaustive and anal3rtical search 
into the origin of the term Hoosier, Mr. Dunn very 
truly says: "The essential point is, that Indiana and 
her people had nothing whatever to do with its origin 
or significance. It was applied to us in raillery, and 
our only connection with it is that we have borne 
it meekly for some three score years and ten, and 
have made it widely recognized as a badge of honor, 
rather than a term of reproach." In the language 
of Mr. Maurice Thompson, "Say Hoosier, if you like, 
but say it with admiration and pride." 



CHAPTER XX 

AGRICULTURE IN INDIANA 

IN the very opening of the history of Indiana, the 
French settlers did Httle in agriculture beyond 
cultivating, in communistic fashion, the gardens 
and fields about the forts, under the encouragement 
of the priests. The French trader opposed agricultural 
settlements, because they destroyed his trade in 
peltries, and the Jesuit was sometimes hostile to 
them, because they dispersed the Indians and removed 
his mission field. The French Government gave no 
land grants, at many of the posts, hence there was 
no permanency of settlements as where some system 
of land-holding prevailed. When the American settlers 
came out from the Eastern coast, it was to make 
homes and cultivate the land. 

Marquis Duquesne himself had shown the Indians, 
before he left in 1754, the difference there would 
be to them between the English and French colo- 
nization: reminded them that the Frenchman was 
not a menace to their game areas, that they could 
hunt to the very walls of the French forts, and that 
those forts were placed conveniently for trading- 
stations with the natives; that the inhabitants 
were only a garrison; and they had their lands as 
tenants of the crown. On the other hand, the English 

459 



46o Historic Indiana 

moved the frontier forward, only to possess the land. 
They felled the forests, planted the ground, and the 
game disappeared. Congregations and communities 
were established at every favorable landing where 
the products of the soil might be shipped to the markets 
of the world. They grew steadily into independent 
States, instead of remaining dependent colonies that 
had to be fed from over seas. The magnificent forests 
that were found growing over a large part of Indiana 
indicated an exceedingly rich soil, more productive 
than any State east of it, and from the time of the 
first clearings it has been pre-eminently an agricultural 
State, there being but few acres of its twenty-three 
million that cannot be cultivated. 

"After a personal inspection of a great part of the 
United States, I have seen no portion of the Union 
more beautiful in appearance or one combining so 
many advantages as that which is watered by the 
Wabash River," wrote Henry L. Ellsworth when he 
was Land Commissioner at Washington, and he took 
up great tracts of land in the valley of that river. 
In 1843, ill his message Governor Whitcomb said: 
"Our position, soil, and climate point to that branch 
of labor devoted to agriculture as our chief reliance 
for lasting wealth and prosperity. This calling should 
rank first in respectability as it is unquestionably the 
first in importance to the State." 

An old settler, speaking of Indiana's geographical 
position as a great factor in her future prosperity, 
said that "lying directly across the track, for all time, 
of all the great artificial improvements that can ever 
be made connecting the East with the Pacific, over 
the valley of the Mississippi, coupled with the fact 
that she is so highly favored in climate, soil, mineral, 



^*^ 




J3 






Agriculture in Indiana 461 

wood, water, and rock, we can see that Indiana com- 
bines all of the elements of a great and growing State." 

Into this territory, where the aborigines had raised 
their crops by making holes in the ground with bone 
hoes and dropping in a seed, to come up without 
further cultivation than scratching the soil a little, 
the first farmers came. They began their primitive 
culture by cutting down or girdling the forest trees, 
and cultivated their first crops between the stumps. 
Generally they paid for their lands by selling the 
pelts of the wild animals which they had shot in the 
woods. Often the ploughshare was the only piece of 
iron in their equipment. The rest of that implement 
was made by the farmer himself from white oak; as 
also was made his harrow, both timbers and teeth. 
All of the farmer's implements were well pinned to- 
gether with hickory pins, through holes that were 
burned out, for he had no auger. In winter rudely 
fashioned sleds, hauled by plodding oxen, carried the 
farmer's crops and timber to market. Wooden rakes 
were . universal, and pitch-forks were made from the 
forked boughs of a tree, or the antlers of an elk. The 
cabin of the settler, the mortar for grinding grain, 
the cider press, the tannery, the implements of toil, 
were all made at home, and without nails, screws, 
or bolts. 

Comfortable homes, great granaries, and barns have 
long ago displaced these primitive surroundings. It 
is interesting to recount the various movements and 
influences that have contributed to the rapid progress 
of the farming community. First, because earliest 
and most continuous, must be accounted the rural 
churches and Sabbath-schools, with the social as- 
sembling of all ages for worship and friendly inter- 



462 Historic Indiana 

course, as the greatest means of the development in 
Indiana farm life. 

Next to the church gatherings, the earliest stimulus 
the farmer had to do better things, materially, was 
the organization of the State and county fairs. There 
had been several successful county fairs held in Indiana 
before the first State fair occurred in 1852, and Gov- 
ernor Wright urged the people to organize a State 
institution for the promotion of friendly rivalry in 
agriculture. It was a new idea in the Western States 
and the first exhibition was a success. The records 
show that the first Indiana State fair lasted through 
three days, each one of which was marked by the 
balmy sunshine of Indian summer ; over thirty thou- 
sand Indiana people were on the fair grounds dur- 
ing the three days, and this first State fair was a 
successful one for the times, in a financial way, in 
exhibits, and in attendance. It called together 
town and country men from remote sections of the 
State. People started from home days before the 
fair opened, some driving horses, and others being 
content with the slow pace of oxen that drew their 
wagons. It was the first general exhibit of the products 
of the labor and skill of the people. The stock-raisers 
of Indiana sent their sleekest cattle to the fair in 1852, 
as they have done every year since. They also sent 
their largest and finest horses, the fattest from their 
herds, the best products from the field and orchard, 
and the best from their looms. 

There were plowing contests between farmer boys, 
who drove either horses or oxen. There were exhib- 
its of many new inventions in farm machinery, very 
helpful in informing the farmer. The new art of 
taking daguerreotypes claimed many patrons. Staves 



Agriculture in Indiana 463 

cut by machinery collected a crowd of sight-seers. 
Homespun fabrics and spinning-wheels were shown 
side by side with the recently introduced invention 
called sewing-machines, which enlisted the greatest 
curiosity, because of their novelty. There were half 
a dozen railroads in operation in the State by that 
time, and they carried in thousands of people to the 
fair who had never been on a train before ! The plank 
roads passed animals free of toll, and the roads were 
lined with exhibits going into town. One newspaper 
contained the editorial annoimcement that it was 
sure the State fair would infuse into the farmers a 
just pride in the utility and greatness of their pursuits, 
and "that a laudable ambition to have the mantel 
decorated with a silver cup will actuate all, and, thus 
feeling and acting, who can calculate the ultimate 
result?" 

In the earlier years of the State fair, energy was 
directed to building up public interest in the enter- 
prise, and with this purpose in view the fair was 
held .at various points in the State. The chief reason 
for this was to bring it within reach of all the people, 
and to maintain the interest that the first fair had 
won. The other reason was, the State Board of Ag- 
riculture was in its infancy; its treasury had nothing 
behind it but the faith and good- will of the people. 
It had no permanent home. The State Board borrowed 
from county fair associations the use of their grounds 
in these earlier years. In 1853, the second State fair 
was held, at Lafayette. Horace Greeley delivered 
the speech, which was made one of the chief attractions. 
The next season the State fair was held at Madison. 
Until 1868, the fair was migratory. In 1861, the 
strife of war cast a gloom over its career. Soldiers 



464 Historic Indiana 

were camping on the grounds, and no exhibition 
could be held that year. The misfortunes of the war 
followed the fair through the years of 1862 and 1863, 
when the institution lost money. In 1868, the fair 
came back to Indianapolis, to wander no more from 
county to county. The attendance has increased 
since its salad days with the growth of the population, 
until now fully 164,000 people are in attendance. 

The social side of all of the agricultural fairs cannot 
be overlooked in estimating the benefits derived from 
them. The people come up to their county exhibitions, 
renew old friendships, and make new acquaintances, 
which is a most wholesome variation of the daily 
treadmill of their isolated existence. The people 
have been loyal to these local institutions too; one 
prosperous farmer's wife, who was going for a tour 
of Europe, said, "I shall not go until after our county 
fair; my husband and I have not missed a session 
since its organization." Lectures and demonstrations 
in agriculture and domestic science are generally held 
on the grounds in connection with the exhibition. 
These advantages contribute to their educational value. 

The fairs have always been the largest means of 
making known improvements in farm machinery, 
which has manifolded the labors of each man on the 
farm. To appreciate the lightening of toil by invention 
applied to farm implements, we only need to recall 
that until 1840 grain was mown with scythe and 
sickle; and great bands of reapers were necessary to 
gather the golden crop. These troops of men went 
from the southern to the northern part of the State, 
garnering the harvest as it ripened in each district. 
After the grain-cradle was introduced, a man could 
reap the great area of two acres a day! In those 



Agriculture in Indiana 465 

times the grain was threshed out with a flail or tramped 
out by horses and winnowed through sieves. The 
first crude threshing-machines had a capacity of 
thirty to sixty bushels of wheat a day, and the chaff 
must be separated by men using wooden rakes and 
forks in the choking dust. Afterwards they must 
drop the grain from an elevation, at the same time 
dexterously fanning it with a tow sheet. Lieutenant 
Governor Cumback used to be fond of telling that 
when his father bought an improvement for this 
labor, in the form of a fanning-mill, he was taken 
to task by a devout neighbor, who maintained that, 
as it was a " wind contrary to nature, " it must be 
displeasing to the Almighty. Soon there were travelling 
threshers, with six horses and twice as many men, 
who astonished the agricultural world by threshing 
two hundred bushels a day! Later steam machines 
appeared and two thousand bushels were threshed 
out, and the dust blown far from the sweltering 
laborers. The improvement in farm machinery for 
other- purposes was equally startling. Indiana now 
stands near the head of the line in the manufacture 
of these implements and vehicles. 

The introduction of machinery was the greatest 
factor in the increase of the comforts of living and 
the efficiency of labor on the farm, in Indiana, as 
elsewhere. When we remember the primitive im- 
plements of the past, we think with patience of the 
boys who left the farm. The future before the Hoosier 
on the farm is the ideal life, where the work is to be 
done by the combined use of brains and machines, 
when electricity from the streams will perform the 
toil, and science will have added to the productiveness 
of the acres. 



466 Historic Indiana 

The first Governor of the infant commonwealth, 
Jonathan Jennings, was a farmer and deserves the 
honor of being the man who introduced clover into 
the State. He imported the seed from England in 
1832, paying thirty-five dollars a bushel for it. 

In 1862, President Lincoln gave his approval to the 
bills creating the Agricultural Commission, and to 
the land grant act, establishing colleges of agriculture 
in all the States, which Buchanan had vetoed two 
sessions before. This grant was the largest ever made 
to education, and was the foundation of industrial ed- 
ucation in America, which is to revolutionize methods 
of higher instruction. In Indiana, the results of this 
act, and a further one of the State Legislature taking 
advantage ot it, was the establishment of Purdue 
University at Lafayette in 1874. The value of the 
agricultural department of this school to the State 
is only limited by the appropriations made by the 
Legislature for its further upbuilding. Other States 
should not be allowed to outstrip it, either in the 
initiative of its management or in its equipment, if 
Indiana is to keep pace with its neighbors on every 
side. Indiana's agricultural university gave instruc- 
tion to more than one hundred thousand people of 
the State in 1907. This multitude was reached through 
the regular college course, the short course in agricul- 
ture, the Farmers' Institutes, and that popular form of 
instruction of sending out corn and fruit excursion 
trains through the counties. These trains carry valuable 
exhibits of superior products of the soil, and specimens 
showing the ravages made by insects. Lecturers 
from the staff of the university accompany the train, 
and instruct the assembled farmers. 

Besides the agricultural fairs, and the establishment 



Agriculture in Indiana 467 

of a great university as the fountain head of all pro- 
gressive work, the Farmers' Institute, promoted by 
that university, and conducted by its staff of teachers, 
is one of the most broadening influences in the rural 
life of Indiana. It is recognized that the Farmers' 
Institute is to the adult farmer what the agricultural 
school is to his son. Through the papers read at 
these meetings, and the discussions which ensue, 
the farmer receives the benefit of years of study and 
investigation by scientific men. Another very practical 
mission is performed by the university in connection 
with its "short course in agriculture," which is held 
in January each year; that is, the assembling of the 
Com School, and other agricultural organizations, 
within the very walls of the university. These sessions 
are attended by enthusiastic farmers, numbering over 
a thousand, who are intent on learning better methods. 
Scores of their wives and daughters are enrolled in 
the courses of domestic science, poultry-raising, dairy 
work, and horticulture. The faculty of the university, 
speakers from the Agricultural Department at Wash- 
ington, and practical growers and agriculturists, give 
the lectures. Competent judges pass upon the prizes 
to be awarded to youths, who are entered for practice in 
judging exhibits. These annual meetings at the college 
have double the value of conventions held elsewhere ; 
for the menibers receive definite scientific instruction. 
They also have the advantage of practical demonstrations 
in the raising of stock, grain, and fruits, coupled with 
strict judging of the products displayed. The close ex- 
amination of 2025 exhibits of the best seed that can be 
raised in Indiana, and 133 different exhibits of fruits 
as well as prize cattle and dairy products, were among 
the practical object lessons of the 1908 session. 



468 Historic Indiana 

The grange, as now organized and conducted, is 
one of the important steps for improvement instituted 
by the agricultural classes. Being on a co-operative 
and educational basis, and non-political, it can work 
for the betterment of conditions in rural life along 
so many lines that its influence in the future should 
be vast. In Indiana its membership is growing steadily . 
As it is a "family club" and holds county, State, 
and national meetings, it necessarily follows that 
when the grange chooses to address itself to vital 
questions it can sway a multitude of opinions, and 
be a great force in the commonwealth. 

Agricultural and live-stock journals, and kindred 
departments in the regular newspapers, have been a 
most potent influence in the history of Indiana farm 
life. They bring inspiration, information, and en- 
tertainment into the farmer's home. The ability 
and knowledge engaged in this editorial work is com- 
mensurate with the wide influence of their pages. 
Perhaps the periodicals of no other trade or calling 
have more attractive pages than those published for 
country life. Not only the useful reading matter is 
valuable, but the illustrations are surpassingly beauti- 
ful. To be a progressive farmer in this day, without 
the agricultural and live-stock periodicals, is not to 
be imagined. The State publications and all other 
journals of merit have their hosts of subscribers in 
rural Indiana. It requires but a glance over the 
papers on the table of a representative farmer to 
estimate their usefulness to him. 

Indiana is showing the results of all these influences 
in the increased productiveness of her areas, the 
extension of good roads, the comfort of the farm- 
houses, and barns for cattle, and the improvement 




PQ 



O 



Agriculture in Indiana 469 

in schools. These all demonstrate the progressive 
spirit of the agricultural communities. At the National 
Corn Show of 1907 out of eight thousand exhibits, 
shown from all of the corn-growing States, those from 
Indiana were declared superior. A single first-prize 
ear of Johnson County White Dent corn, raised by 
a gentleman from Franklin, Indiana, sold for $250.00. 
Twenty-five other prizes were taken by Indiana 
farmers, which shows what intelligent growers can 
do, with this soil and climate. Indiana also won 
"every blue ribbon" in some classes of horses and 
cattle at the live-stock shows of the same year. That 
there is large room for further improvement must be 
admitted, when the claim is conceded that the present 
population may increase fourfold and still get its 
living from the soil that is now in cultivation; that 
the resources of the country, in unimproved areas» 
will admit an increase of population twice that amount 
with scientific, intensive farming! 

Probably nothing of more importance has been 
inaugurated on Hoosier soil than the movement to 
introduce elementary study of agriculture into the 
free public schools, to which we have alluded in the 
chapter on Education. In time this work should 
revolutionize farm life in Indiana. It gives an ideal 
education for the average farmer's sons and daughters, 
and turns the attention of town youths toward the 
country. In speaking upon this important innovation, 
a lecturer from the university said truly: "The study 
of agriculture in country schools, in most of its ram- 
ifications, is of perennial and universal interest. It 
sustains a vital relation to the life and well-being of 
the individual, and of the community. The subject 
is not only interesting and inspiring, but it is also 



470 Historic Indiana 

definitely practical. It has to do with the problem 
of bread and butter. It deals with the here and now\" 
Another reason for the study of elementary agri- 
culture, which applies particularly to the rural schools, 
is the right of the country children to a school training 
which will specially prepare them for life on the farm. 
The great majority of these children do not attend 
school beyond the eighth grade. If special instruction 
in the elements of agriculture is denied them before 
that grade is finished they must be greatly handicapped 
in their efforts to win success and become useful 
citizens. An agricultural high school, supported by 
a group of counties, which would give a sound in- 
dustrial training for the boys and girls who are not 
to go further, with the agricultural university main- 
tained as the pinnacle of the educational scheme, 
is the intention of Indiana educators. In a most 
interesting paper, Professor Hays has outlined the 
plan of the high school as suited to the agricultural 
districts, in which he says that the course covers three 
winters of six months each, leaving the student on 
the home farm during the six crop months, where 
the industrial, business, and social position is retained 
unbroken. With this arrangement eighty-two per 
cent, of the graduates remain in agriculture, seventy 
per cent, actually return to the farm! In the history 
of agricultural Indiana this is a most important step 
in advance. Evidence of the wonderful interest in- 
spired by these elementary lessons in agriculture in 
the district schools is given in the displays of re- 
sults already achieved by the pupils. Many counties 
have organized clubs for the study of the problems 
of tillage, soil, and seeds. Any pupil, boy or girl, 
who is regularly enrolled in the school and doing 



Agriculture in Indiana 471 

creditable work may enter the contest. Seed is 
distributed to them after preliminary instructions 
have been given; and bulletins on corn-growing, is- 
sued by the university, are distributed to the mem- 
bers. Prizes are offered, and experienced judges are 
provided when the crop is exhibited. During the 
season of growth of the little plantations, the pupils 
are expected to keep notes of the kind of soil, amount 
of moisture, cultivation, drainage, and yield from 
their individual plot. When the date arrives for 
the display of the products it is made a gala time. 
In some districts there is a procession, headed 
by a band of music. Often there is a corn dinner, 
cooked and served by the girls of the club. Some 
organizations have given trolley excursions to 
visit Purdue University, where they view other 
exhibits. 

Most of the boys of the clubs have been reported 
as very successful growers. Some of the plots of 
ground planted by them have produced at the rate 
of a. hundred bushels to the acre. When sold for 
seed the prize packages in many places sold for $2.00, 
and none of the corn brought in to the contest sold 
for less than $2.00 a bushel. 

The influence of these clubs reaches out over the 
whole country where they are organized, provoking 
rivalry among the farmers too, and arousing their 
attention to the importance of careful selection of 
seed, and the scientific cultivation of the crops. This 
extended mention of the school clubs is justified in a 
sketch of agriculture in Indiana, because it is the most 
practical progressive step in the history of farming, 
and shows what advancement the whole State may 
make in productive wealth, when the work of the 



472 Historic Indiana 

county schools is based on the dominant interest of 
the community. 

The history of the agricultural districts in Indiana 
shows that they have steadily endeavored to throw 
off the yoke of intemperance, which hampers pros- 
perity in the cities and reaches out for the countryman. 
Three fourths of the townships of the State now pro- 
hibit the sale of liquor, and every year the list of 
"dry" townships, and even counties, grows longer. 
This movement against the liquor traffic in the country 
districts is full of hope for the future, and will prove 
of priceless value to the commonwealth. 

When factories superseded, to a certain extent, the 
home-made productions, agricultural Indiana added 
a new industry in the form of truck farming. The 
canning establishments which have sprung up within 
the factory era have provided an enlarged market for 
the produce of the small farmer living near these enter- 
prises. Several hundred thousand acres in the State 
are now devoted to this purpose, and it gives a greater 
chance for variety of crops. Probably 2,900,000 bushels 
of tomatoes alone are now produced annually. 

The labor of woman on the farms, in the raising 
of poultry and fruits and the making of butter, has 
become an enormous economic factor in rural com- 
merce. In Indiana the greater part of poultry and 
eggs is raised by the women; and the value of this 
product in the last year reached over fifteen and a 
quarter millions of dollars. The influence of women 
in the agricultural communities of Indiana does not 
stop with the commercial side. Her part in the 
Farmers' Institutes, Sunday-school conventions, church 
meetings, sessions of the grange, in the day schools, 
and the county and State fairs is fully equal to that 



Agriculture in Indiana 473 

of the men. Mrs. Virginia Meredith of Indiana is a 
well known exponent of agricultural instruction and 
progress, in theory and practice; but she can call 
to her aid scores of efficient workers, from every part 
of the State, in all forward movements for the rural 
communities. 

With a soil so rich as that in Indiana, good roads 
were felt, from the very dawn of her history, to be 
a vital necessity, as there seemed to be no bottom 
to the trail through the forests. The early settlers 
were ever floundering through mud-holes, fording 
streams, and helping one another's teams out of a 
quagmire. The improvement of the highways has 
been steady but very deliberate. Some districts are 
still far in advance of others, with a consequent effect 
on their prosperity. Wells County built one hundred 
and two miles of gravel roads last year, while another 
county built but one. The constant agitation of the 
subject by a few enterprising men in each district 
has added a thousand miles a year since 1900 to the 
sum total of good roads, which now reaches the number 
of 16,268 miles. Shades of the forefathers, who had 
to travel on horseback through the mud, bear witness 
and hope for more! Indiana may take pattern from 
the interesting story told by Joseph Brown, apropos 
of better roads, and how one neighborhood attained 
them. His story goes that 

" After John Tyler retired from the presidency of the 
United States, his neighbors of the other party, as a sort 
of a practical joke, and also perhaps to show their opinion 
of his capacity, got together and elected him roadmaster, 
but they wot not that they were casting a boomerang. 
John accepted the office. The Virginia law gives this 
functionary almost unlimited power in calling out citizens 



474 Historic Indiana 

for road service, and the distinguished roadmaster made 
the most of his privilege. For about three months that 
year, in season and out of season, he worked his constituency 
on the public highways, till they wished they had n't done 
it. Tyler stood the joke better than they did, and the 
travelling public got the benefits." 

Purdue University authorities have for some time 
been making a careful study of the good roads question 
in the State, and received reports from hundreds of 
farmers, some of whom live on good roads once bad, 
and others on roads still bad. From these reports 
they have computed statistics, showing that the 
difference between good and bad roads amounts to 
seventy-eight cents an acre annually on the farms. 
Multiplying this amount by the entire State — 23,264,- 
000 acres — we have the sum of $18,145,920. Of this 
amount, fully two thirds is wasted every year in the 
State in the loss of time, and in the loss of opportunity 
in securing the best market for the produce of the 
farm. As State Geologist Blatchley points out, Indiana 
is rich in clay suitable for vitrified brick, rich in gravel, 
rich in stone for macadam roads. There are plenty 
of convicts needing the exercise, w^ho could manu- 
facture these products in private. There is no reason, 
therefore, why every public road of any importance 
in the State should not be improved, so that it can 
be travelled with ease any day in the year. 

Rural mail delivery, where the roads warrant it, 
has added more to the convenience and pleasure of 
country life than any provision of the government 
since regular mail service was first provided. 

Another event in rural Indiana's history was the 
building of electric roads which have been extended 
across the State. Over thirteen hundred miles of 



Agriculture in Indiana 475 

these rapid transit conveniences now pass the doors 
of Indiana farmers, bringing them in close commun- 
ication with town and market. Telephones and 
automobiles have also added to the luxury of living. 
Land values are increased by the combined agencies 
of these modem conveniences; and the isolation 
which causes so many to desert the farm, and makes 
labor so scarce, will be largely overcome by rapid 
transit. 

The greatest single instrument of progress in agri- 
culture in Indiana has been the progressive spirit of 
individuals. In the century of Indiana's history, 
from territorial days onward, there have been so 
many men who have led their immediate district 
into more progressive agricultural practices, that any 
personal mention would leave out great numbers 
who have been a blessing to the State by improving 
the conditions in their own neighborhoods. Bi- 
ographies of statesmen, politicians, and military men 
figure largely in history, but the available "short 
and simple annals" of farmers are so scarce that it 
is almost necessary to treat of them as a group. To 
improve the quality of seed com or potatoes, or to 
import better live-stock into a region, deserves the 
commendation of him who "makes two blades of 
grass grow where one grew before." Some of these 
progressive residents of the State were individuals 
whose business did not permit them to live in the 
country, but who had such a genuine love for the 
soil that they have always been farmers in addition 
to their other duties, and have found pleasure and 
profit to themselves and their neighbors in practical 
agriculture. These men have helped to inspire their 
farmer acquaintances with increased pleasure in 



476 Historic Indiana 

country life, and enthusiasm in tilling the soil. They 
have encouraged road-building, and better rural 
schools, introduced new fruits, poultry, and grain, and 
raised the grade of cattle and horses. 

Among the first registered live stock in Indiana, 
it is said, were the pure-bred short-horn cattle brought 
into the State in 1825 by Edward Talbott. Since 
that time, the values in live-stock farming have been 
immensely increased by the interests maintained in 
Indiana on the special breeding farms. The cattle 
and horses shown every year by experienced and 
enterprising men in Indiana have commanded prizes 
in State and international exhibitions. These leaders 
have stood for high standards in pure breeding. The 
value of their famous herds of cattle, and breeding 
farms of horses, sheep, and swine, to the general 
farming interests of Indiana, is not to be calculated 
by their own financial returns. 

"We have a self-satisfied way of considering [says 
the Gazette] that all the pioneering has been done in the 
work of live-stock improvements in America. We could 
not think farther off the true Hne. The whole rural 
community must be brought forward. It is easy enough 
to have faith in that which is demonstrated before our 
eyes by these breeders of pedigreed stock; and we may 
go ahead along a Hne marked out by a neighbor, when we 
hear the clink of the golden coin as it jingles in his pocket." 

The National Registry Associations, which main- 
tain the "strict letter of the law" in live-stock ped- 
igrees, have always had Indiana men identified with 
their management. The active secretaries have given 
many years to the supervision of correct registry of 
live stock, as a means of keeping up the standards 



Agriculture in Indiana 477 

to the highest grade, and these citizens must be en- 
rolled among the vital influences of progress in the 
industry. 

Regarding the outlook for the future of agriculture 
in Indiana, the following statements in the Indiana 
Farmer regarding farming in the middle West are 
very pertinent. 

"The writer moved five hundred miles east, to his 
present location, because of the rapid division of Western 
ranges and ranches into small farms. By thus increasing 
the value of the arid lands they place the East on a fair 
competing basis with the far West. Western ranges which 
formerly yielded unlimited free grass to all comers are 
now on an acre basis; it must be seen that the middle 
West is now able to compete fairly with the far West 
in cattle-raising." 

Another reason for expecting continued prosperity 
in the profession of farming is that Indiana's field 
crops are fairly divided into the great staple products 
of wheat, oats, timothy, and clover, averaging between 
one and two million acres of each; all of which are 
in steady demand. For com the average runs over 
four million acres. 

Dairy farming in Indiana has been very largely 
confined to the northern counties, and near the capital. 
But her geographical position seems to indicate a 
sustained future demand for this industry. Indeed, 
Indiana farmers are fortunate in being about the 
centre of things, for markets, temperate climate, 
fertility of soil, and transportation. Under these 
favorable conditions, intensive farming is an assurance 
of increased income in the future. 

In closing a sketch of Indiana's progress in agri- 



47^ Historic Indiana 

culture, it is not amiss to recall again that, owing to 
her geographical position, the State is spread before 
the eyes of the travelling world. If she has shiftless 
farms and untidy villages, they are " seen of all men." 
More thrift is desirable, not only for increased revenues 
to individuals, but for the good name of the State. 
The following thoughtful suggestion from a Winona 
Agricultural Institute address is most invaluable to 
rural Indiana: 

"During the next few years we may be sure that lawn- 
planting, as an art, will develop into a most important 
feature of home life of the humblest owner of a spot of 
ground. An abundant variety of trees, blooming plants, 
ferns, and trailing vines may be found hidden and unseen 
by the man that owns them. What a wealth of education 
and enjoyment they would bring into everyday life, if a 
goodly portion of them were placed near the house; such 
decoration would be a source of pleasure to those doing 
the work, and to all the occupants of the home." 

Most farmers try to cultivate too much land, and 
they would in many cases grow rich faster if they 
cultivated less land and planted the less productive 
places, the odd bits, the rough stony fields, and abrupt 
slopes, the small irregular lots in the angles, with 
trees, that would beautify their place and in time 
add value to the property. In the future, the home 
garden and dooryard, w^ell kept, as part of the real 
farm work, is to be the distinguishing mark of the 
domain of the enlightened farmer. 



M' 



CHAPTER XXI 

NATURAL RESOURCES 

OST of the natural products necessary for 
modern existence may be found within the 
limits of the State of Indiana. Without 
surpassing States that have a larger area, she comes 
within the first ten in the development of a large 
range of products and deposits. This makes residence 
within her borders far more desirable than if she 
possessed in abundance any one of the precious metals, 
to the exclusion of necessities. The variety of the 
agricultural resources of the State has been considered 
elsewhere. They have always been counted as her 
chief source of wealth, but the geographical position 
of the State, and the development of the deposits 
in the geological strata underneath the surface, make 
manufacturing also a great source of profit. Most 
of the natural resources of Indiana lie undeveloped, 
and none of them has been exhausted. The maxi- 
mum of agricultural crops has not been approached; 
the mineral deposits await the demands of the future. 
The uses to be made of Indiana's limited lake shore 
is an undeveloped feature of the great commercial 
life that is only dawning upon its business world. 
Already great manufacturing interests have recognized 
the availability of combined harbor and railway 

479 



480 Historic Indiana 

facilities possessed by the extreme northwestern 
portion of the State. This district formerly had no 
inhabitants but huntsmen in quest of game. Now, 
vast industries, which will require a great population 
to carry them on, are being established, making the 
whilom sand dunes and marshes of great commercial 
importance. 

Of the wealth of timber once possessed by the State 
there is but a fraction remaining. Statistics show 
that more than four-fifths of the area, at its settlement, 
was heavily timbered with the most valuable varieties 
of forest growth. There were the many varieties of 
oaks, walnut, ash, cherry, poplar, elm, maples, hick- 
ories, beech, Cottonwood, sycamore, and more than 
one hundred other varieties. Much of this timber 
was very large; an early explorer left a memorandum 
of blazing a sycamore that was forty feet around. 
The official measurements of the State Statistician 
gives authentic record of oaks' — black, white, burr, 
and scarlet varieties' — that were six and seven feet in 
diameter and a hundred and ninety feet in height. 
This fine timber was an encumbrance to the early 
settler, who had no market for it and must raise bread- 
stuffs. What would now be worth billions of dollars 
was rolled into great piles and burned, when there 
was more than could be used for fences and fuel, 
in order to clear the land for cultivation of crops. 
For many years the corn raised on these same lands 
would not sell for more than ten cents a bushel. As 
lumber came into demand, later on, Indiana was 
almost devastated of hard-wood timber. Her forests 
furnished enormous amounts of the hard woods used 
in the manufactories of the country. In the early 
days, there were great areas covered with sugar-maple 



Natural Resources 481 

trees, which served the settlers as "sugar orchards," 
and sugar-making time was a season of harvesting 
the annual sweets. The Indians were as fond of maple 
sugar as the white man. One red chief, who had been 
sent west of the Mississippi to a reservation with his 
tribe, stole off and wandered back to his old haunts 
in Indiana, grunting "must have maple sugar." 
Most of the present timber areas are second growth, 
except in the hill regions of the southern counties. 
The statistics of 1905 report that there were still a 
million three hundred and seventy thousand acres 
of timber land in Indiana, but probably not more 
than half a million acres that could be called mer- 
chantable for manufacturing purposes. Professor 
Stanley Coulter, than whom there is no greater 
authority on the flora and forests of Indiana, says, 
that, originally, seven-eighths of the 21,673,760 acres, 
comprising the area of the State, was covered with 
a dense growth of timber. Many of the most valuable 
hard-wood forms reached their maximum development, 
both as regards size and number, within the bounds 
of this vState; what remains can but little more than 
remind us of the wealth of the past. Of the one hundred 
and thirteen species of trees found within the State, 
seventy-five were in use in manufactures, and hence 
had a market value. Professor Coulter makes an 
eloquent plea for a systematic reforestation of un- 
tillable lands. 

"It was of course necessary to reduce the original timber 
lands in order to gain agricultural areas; but the demand 
for crop areas being satisfied, the remaining timber lands 
should be so treated as to secure their constant reproduction 
and betterment. The present impoverished condition of 
the forests is very largely the result of the neglect of such 



482 Historic Indiana 

precautions on the part of the preceding generation of 
landowners." ^ 

The day is coming when, timber will be a more paying 
crop on some lands than corn. Systematic and scien- 
tific reforestation should be the watchword of en- 
lightened landholders in a State where the native 
forests indicate exceptionally superior natural adapta- 
bility of soil and climate for tree-growing. That 
growth showed what the results of planting may 
insure in the future. There is no aesthetic and mer- 
chantable future for denuded hillsides, made barren 
of verdure by the removal of trees and incapable of 
producing crops. The lowlands are the natural home 
of the nut trees, and a little attention to forestry will 
again make both hills and valleys a source of profit 
and beauty. 

The coal deposits of Indiana form one of her greatest 
resources. Eighteen counties contribute to the total 
production. Some of the mines produce block and 
Others bituminous coal, making it possible for the 
State to furnish both superior and cheap grades of 
fuel. The better grades have great heat, steam, and 
gas properties. The production of coal has increased 
rapidly and uninterruptedly during the last dozen 
years, having trebled, in that period from 3,905,779 
short tons in 1896 until in 1907 it reached 12,492,255 
tons. Coal is at present the greatest tonnage of any 
commodity moved in the State. Fifty million tons, 
annually, could be produced from her own mines if 
there was a demand; nearly ten million dollars are 
paid in wages to miners of this product each year. 

> Coulter, Stanley, "Flowering Plants, Ferns, etc., Indigenous to 
Indiana," 24th Annual Report of Dept. of Geology and Natural 
Resources, 1899, page 574. 




o 






c 

at 
CO 

0) 

cr" 



Natural Resources 483 

The State Geologist shows that no State in the Union, 
except Pennsylvania, possesses a better and cheaper 
supply of fuels than Indiana. The coal is used to 
great advantage in the creation of "producer gas," 
which is largely used for manufacturing purposes, 
since the failure of natural gas. 

Indiana has developed oil fields in four different 
sections of the State, and in as many different geo- 
logical strata, varying in depth from 100 to 1350 
feet, with an annual output, in late years, of from 
eight to eleven million barrels annually. The Trenton 
rock area, covers portions of nine counties, in the 
central northeastern part of the State, and belongs 
to the same field as the Lima-Ohio oil and gas. 
A smaller field, in the region of Terre Haute, pro- 
duces petroleum from the Corniferous limestone, 
and there is an almost abandoned field in the same 
formation in Jasper County. The Princeton field, 
in the southwestern part of the State, near the Illinois 
line, has developed deposits of oil in the Huron sand- 
stone strata, after disclosing five different veins of 
coal in boring the wells, but the region about Princeton 
has been very superficially tested, and further develop- 
ment will probably reveal greater deposits. There is 
no way of determining, in Indiana, by any surface 
indications, w^hether petroleum or gas may be found. 
Both lie in pockets, and may be developed in remun- 
erative quantities for years to come, one well being 
no test for any location even a few feet away. No 
doubt oil exists beneath many localities where there 
has never been any prospecting, and where the ex- 
ploration has been too shallow to reach the great 
depth at which the deposits are found in this State. 
In the future, when there is greater scarcity elsewhere, 



484 Historic Indiana 

the fields within the State will be more carefully 
developed. 

An interesting revelation is that the clays of Indiana 
rank in value next to coal and petroleum. The State 
Geologist demonstrates that Indiana has within her 
counties the raw material in abundance for making 
every kind of clay product used within her borders. 
Kaolin of the purest quality occurs in vast quantities, 
the veins extending through miles of territory where 
outcroppings reveal deposits that have never been 
uncovered. "There it lies," writes Mr. Blatchley, 
"a great mineral resource of untold value, unworked, 
unutilized, awaiting only the coming of energy and 
capital to make it up into many kinds of products 
which are now brought into the State from distant 
lands." ^ Fire-clays of fine quality also await the 
manufacturer. In many different counties there are 
small industries engaged in the manufacture of building 
brick, paving brick, encaustic tile, terra-cotta, drain 
tile, stoneware, and some white wares. These factories 
increase annually, and those already established 
find it profitable to increase their capacities. The 
materials for road construction have been revealed 
in inexhaustible quantities. The stone for macadam, 
the gravel deposit, and clays for brick are unsurpassed. 
Of the deposits of shale, so available in Indiana, the 
State Geologist says that a dozen years ago those 
great soft beds of soft blue-gray, thin-layered rock, 
which occur over vast areas in the coal-bearing counties, 
were looked upon as a wholly valueless nuisance, 
which had to be removed or tunnelled through before 
the underlying veins of coal could be reached. To-day 

1 Blatchley, William S., State Geological Report, 1906. Indian- 
apolis. 



Natural Resources 485 

the smoke is pouring forth from hundreds of kilns 
where these shales are being burned into paving brick, 
sewer pipe, hollow brick, conduits, drain tile, pressed 
front, and ordinary building brick. Not only have 
the carboniferous shales been proven in the highest 
degree suitable for the best of such products, but 
the knob -stone shales, which were accounted even 
more valueless, are now being utilized for vitrified 
and pressed brick as well as the clay ingredient of 
Portland cement. These knob-stone shales are very 
available, lying, as they do, close to the surface, over 
an area three to forty miles wide and extending from 
Jasper County to the Ohio River. Allied to these 
industries is the very interesting development of 
making superior building brick from the white sands 
of the lake counties, where clays are scarce. Combined 
with eight to twelve per cent, of unslacked lime, and 
moulded under steam pressure, a cream-colored build- 
ing brick is manufactured. Unlimited quantities may 
be made from the mountains of sand cast up by the 
great lake. 

Lying near the great Chicago market for building 
material are the extensive deposits of marly clay, 
excellent for the manufacture of a terra-cotta fire- 
proof material for building purposes. These marl 
beds in the lake counties of Indiana are also suitable 
for the making of Portland cement. This greatest 
of modem commodities may also be created from the 
limitless quantities of limestone found in all sections 
of the State. The growth of the values of concrete 
for the manufacture of structural materials, and the 
use of the clay products in Indiana for those purposes, 
show that capital is awakening to the resources 
immediately at the door of the great markets, and 



486 Historic Indiana 

their availability on account of the State's central 
location and transportation facilities. 

Indiana has become justly famous for her quarries 
of unrivalled building stone, outranking any other 
State in the desirability and variety of stone for 
purposes of construction. Twenty-three counties have 
working quarries in operation. The Oolitic limestone, 
known to commerce as the Bedford stone, which 
possesses so many qualities of excellence for great 
architectural monuments, is only on the threshold 
of its development. The formation stretches from 
Putnam County to the Ohio River, in a tract from 
two to fourteen miles in width ; and occurs in a stratum 
near the surface and varying from twenty-five to 
one hundred feet in thickness. This stone is easily 
carved when first quarried, has beauty of color, great 
fire-resisting properties, and the stratum is so massive 
that the size of the blocks quarried need only be limited 
by the facilities for its transportation. Its availability 
is further enhanced by its immediate location along 
the lines of railways. Perhaps the building stone 
which ranks next in importance in the State is the 
Niagara limestone, which also occurs over a wide 
area and in very accessible localities. It is found 
lying in natural seams, making it easily quarried 
without blasting. It is handsome in color and very 
durable. There are also beautiful sandstones for 
building purposes, in great abundance along the 
lower western border of the State. Stones adapted 
to paving, the manufacture of concrete, macadam, 
ballast, flagging, and other purposes are found in all 
sections of the State; the formations used in the 
manufacture of lime have been notable since the 
first settlement of this State, as have also the grind- 



Natural Resources 487 

and whetstone. The interesting Madison County 
limestones, showing a fibrous quaUty in the process 
of manufacture, are being converted into a superior 
mineral wool for building and refrigerating purposes. 

The discovery and the waste of natural gas has a 
lesson which should not go unheeded. The finding 
of natural-gas deposits was a most important factor 
in the development of the eastern-central part of 
Indiana. This gas and petroleum area covers four 
thousand-square miles, with its centre about Anderson. 
In Indiana, gas is found in Trenton rock or sand, 
and then only when the formation is very porous, 
which accounts for the borings that have failed to 
be productive. The first well that was really utilized 
was drilled in March, 1886, and for ten or twelve 
years there was the most phenomenal development 
of the fields, attracting a vast number of industries. 
The finding of gas and the development of the facilities 
of transportation increased the value of the manu- 
factured products of Indiana three hundred and 
sixty- million dollars in the last half century, placing 
her eighth in rank in the Union as a manufacturing 
State. Manufactories of all sorts flocked to a territory 
where free fuel was offered to all comers. The pop- 
ulation increased enormously. Great factories were 
built, towns arose where there had been fields of 
grain, and little hamlets grew into cities. Seventeen 
counties produced gas in paying quantities. In a 
dozen years four of these quiet agricultural counties 
increased their assessed valuation fifty-eight million 
dollars; by 1893, over three hundred million dollars 
had been invested in Indiana factories, and sub- 
stantial and permanent properties were established 
throughout the region. The gas field in Indiana was 



488 Historic Indiana. 

larger than that of any other State. If this great 
natural product, so bountifully stored away by nature, 
had been properly conserved, it might have continued 
to enrich the State for years to come. Never have 
ignorance, wastefulness, and oblivious carelessness of 
fast-passing resources, freely bestowed and vastly val- 
uable, been more surely shown, than in the almost 
criminal waste of natural gas in the central States. 
All through the fields in Indiana and Ohio, if a 
"gusher" came in suddenly, it was allowed to run 
for days without capping, merely for advertising 
purposes. There was a great waste of gas from wells 
used for obtaining oil. Pipe lines were crude and 
wasteful, their disjointed condition causing great 
leakage. Factories wasted it like water and great 
flambeaux flared unextinguished, night and day, at 
every farm gate on the highway. In the zenith of 
production, 100,000,000 cubic feet of this valuable 
fuel was wasted in every twenty-four hours. The 
farmers claimed the right to waste all they pleased, 
as it came from their own wells! The law of '91, 
forbidding this wanton exhaustion was not enforced 
for five years after its passage." Then the authorities 
made strenuous efi"orts to regulate the gas wells. On 
account of this prodigal shiftlessness, there was a 
gradual exhaustion of the pockets, in which the gas 
is supposed to be stored, and the supply has diminished, 
although other wells may be developed in after years. 
Many cities have ceased to be supplied. Some fac- 
tories have moved to other localities within the gas 
belt. Some have resorted to the use of other fuel, 
but the extensive coal-fields are near, and at a very 
low price other fuel is available. The factories are 
so advantageously located with regard to markets 



Natural Resources 489 

and the transportation facilities in Indiana are so 
exceptional that most of the factories have continued 
where they were established. 

The passing of natural gas is a sad commentary on 
the lack of foresight and thrift, even in a material 
age, and a striking example of the vast carelessness 
of nature's benefactions in a country so gloriously 
endowed. The waste of introducing "civilization" 
on a continent may be traced in the sacrifice of the 
timber and the waste of natural gas within the bounds 
of Indiana. The Indians only destroyed each other 
and such game as they could consume. The white 
man came, and, as we have seen, billions of dollars' 
worth of timber was sacrificed. The whole aboriginal 
race was swept from the face of the country. The 
greatest variety of game found in any region was 
annihilated. Beautiful lakes have been drained to 
enlarge farm areas, and myriads of fish in all the 
waters have been ruthlessly exhausted before there 
was any care taken toward replenishing the stream. 
Whole species of beautiful birds have become extinct. 
Something may be done to redeem the waste by re- 
forestation and restocking the streams with fish in 
the immediate future. These are not only possibilities, 
but economic necessities. Sentiment awaits a recom- 
pense for the devastations. 

In the earlier days, Indiana was considered an 
iron-producing State ; there were a dozen blast furnaces, 
and ore has been mined in a score of counties. With 
the building of the largest steel mills in the United 
States on her northern border, the deposits of iron 
will, doubtless, again be found worth developing. 
Mineral paints, partaking of the nature of iron oxide, 
and many ferruginous clays are found in great quan- 



490 Historic Indiana 

tities in southern Indiana, sufficient to make them 
a valuable commercial commodity. 

Very interesting deposits of peat and muck are 
found in the lake counties of Indiana. By a wise 
provision of nature, in the 7500 square miles of the 
northern part of the State, where there is no coal 
or wood, there were found great beds of peat, which 
is only less valuable than coal when dried or pressed 
into form for fuel. When made into coke or charcoal, 
it has a high commercial value; and by changing it 
into producer gas, peat will be a most valuable fuel 
for the future throughout the region where the for- 
mation occurs. 

The muck fields, which formerly were considered 
worthless spots on the farm, are now being burned 
over or mixed with clay or sand and planted to vast 
fields of vegetables; these lands, when brought under 
cultivation, bringing three or four times the price 
per acre of the surrounding ground. 

This chapter cannot serve the purpose of a complete 
report of the natural resources of Indiana, but may 
give a slight idea of the wealth stored beneath the 
surface which is being constantly revealed. Very 
few acres of the State will be found worthless. There 
are no great stretches of wholly unproductive land 
to be traversed before paying areas can be reached ; 
all are near transportation. Either from the soil or 
beneath the surface the landholder may find a reward 
for his investment. What were regarded as waste 
places at one time, it is being demonstrated by the 
geologists is invaluable territory. 

In utilizing the natural resources of the Common- 
wealth, no gift of nature has been more neglected 
than the waters of Indiana. The beautiful lakes 



Natural Resources 491 

that dot the northern counties, the rivers, the gushing 
springs, the flowing wells, and the limpid streams 
which flow through the central and southern districts 
have yet to be made a great factor of wealth and 
pleasure. Nothing has been done toward irrigation, 
and with very few exceptions the farmers have not 
begun to appreciate the value of stocking the waters, 
bordering on their lands, with fish. An intelligent 
co-operation of State and landholder will, in the future, 
render these bodies of water a perennial source of 
food to the whole population. Another vast source 
of wealth and lightening of labor flows all undreamed 
of past village and farm. The sparkling waterfalls 
in the streams and woodland brooks, and the hundreds 
of turbulent rapids in the placid rivers, await their 
development as generators of electric power. As the 
waters slip past farm and town they murmur of energy 
that they might lend to the overworked farmer and 
his tired wife; how light, heat, and power could be 
taken from the rippling streams. They invite the 
village factory and mill to expand, by the use of little 
wires connecting their dynamos with a turbine in 
the waterfall. Independent of coal mines or syndicate 
power-houses, the power is theirs right at hand. Nor 
is it necessary to dwell on the banks of the streams, 
for the power may be transmitted far and wide. 
Twenty counties might have electricity by water- 
power generated by the Wabash; White River and 
its tributaries could serve as many more. Such falls 
as those at Pendleton, at Shields, at Flat Rock, at 
Styner's cataract, and the great rapids in the Ohio 
River could furnish light, heat, and motive power 
for all of the factories, interurban lines, farms, and 
homes in Indiana. Italy calls this water-power, 



492 Historic Indiana 

which she is turning to such vast economic advantage, 
her white coal, and uses it to turn wheels, spindles, 
and trolley lines many miles from the torrent's source. 
The graduating engineers from Purdue and Rose 
Polytechnic have at hand a brilliant career, in the 
conservation of such a force within the State. "To- 
morrow, the day's fuel may be dipped from the brook," 
if the waters of Indiana are utilized, and the forests 
about their sources are preserved. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE STATE OF CIVILIZATION IN INDIANA AS SHOWN BY 
HER LAWS 

THE public sentiment and the legislation of a 
state define her status in civilization. The 
provisions made for equal opportunity for all 
of the people is a test of enlightenment. Indiana 
must measure herself by these standards. With the 
passing of pioneer conditions, when our country 
lived the untrammelled life of a backwoods boy, 
when there was much more than room enough for 
all, and a struggle to live meant manual labor at the 
very most, when no one was very rich or very poor, 
when there was no clashing of class interests, for all 
might rise by their own efforts; with the passing of 
that time when all planted and built and prospered, 
we have come to the time when, with the increase 
of population and the narrowing of opportunity, the 
State must often intervene for the protection of the 
individual and for the good of society. In Indiana, 
as in other States, when new laws for the Common- 
wealth are necessary, there is often a long striving 
after righteousness by the elect, before party strife 
and narrow-mindedness will permit disinterested legis- 
lation. Indiana has not been exempt from this handi- 
cap, and in any estimate of public sentiment due 

493 



494 Historic Indiana 

allowance must be made for this baleful influence in 
delaying legislation. It is necessary to remember 
that after 1872, when the reaction of the patriotic 
fervor of the Civil War period had passed, neither 
party carried the State at two consecutive Presidential 
elections for a quarter of a century. When there is 
this marked conflict of political opinion, the men 
who gain office, in any State, are not always those 
who are enlightened enough to lend their efforts to 
the broadest measures, and the legislation accom- 
plished represents compromise rather than the very 
best thought of its citizenship. Step by step, only, 
may its ideals be realized. Bearing these facts in 
mind, it will be recognized that Indiana has embodied 
enough advanced plans in her statutes to place her 
among the foremost States in the Union in enlightened 
provisions for her population. More than forty years 
ago, in commenting on Robert Dale Owen's part in 
successfully inaugurating all of the pioneer legislation 
for the advancement of woman's control and equitable 
rights over her own property, the London Times 
said that "Indiana has attained by this step the 
highest civilization of any State in the Union," and 
in all of the years since, few States have approached 
her position on this question. The common-law 
dower was abolished, and absolute ownership of one 
third of the whole of the deceased husband's estate 
is conferred upon the widow. Women can own and 
control their own separate property during marriage, 
have a right to their own earnings, and can contract 
every legal obligation that men can, except to become 
security for another person. 

In the chapter on Education, an outline is given 
of the legislation which has been enacted founding 



Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 495 

a comprehensive system for universal instruction of 
all the youth of Indiana. It is shown that a most 
admirable State school system has been developed, 
beginning with compulsory attendance through the 
primary and grammar grades until a child is fourteen 
years old, from thence he may pass into the high 
schools, which are gradually adding industrial and 
manual training. Following this, there is the pro- 
vision for higher learning, in the normal schools and 
great State universities. Opportunities which are 
unsurpassed in possibilities for general culture of all 
her communities are thus afforded, if future legis- 
latures do not deprive the system of the necessary 
appropriations to maintain the structure built on the 
broad foundations already established. 

Coupled with this educational plan, are the enact- 
ments authorizing tax levies to promote the formation 
of public libraries in the towns, and the creation of 
a commission to supervise that work, and also to 
have charge of a system of travelling libraries, which 
are furnished by the State for small villages and the 
rural districts. This legislation enables every school, 
every reading-circle or club, where five persons will 
join together in requesting the service, to have these 
collections of books sent for their use, making it 
unnecessary for the most isolated persons in Indiana 
to be deprived of good literature. 

The temperance laws of Indiana have shown a 
steady advance, of late years, towards the regulation 
of the liquor traffic. ' This control has been assumed 
through the form of regulation by local option rather 
than by a sweeping State prohibition. The laws have 
been secured as a result of the gradual conviction 
in the minds of an ever-increasing number of citizens 



496 Historic Indiana 

that the habit of drinking intoxicants was growing and 
that its effects were ruinous to the people. By far the 
larger portion of the inmates of the penal and correc- 
tional institutions and asylums, and the recipients of 
out-door relief come upon the State for maintenance, 
through the effects of intemperance. Aside from the 
misery and unhappiness entailed, it was recognized as a 
bad business proposition, when the total license fees 
from the sale of liquors brought into the treasury less 
than a million and a half dollars and at the same time 
the Commonwealth was expending twice that sum in 
caring for the wrecks of humanity caused by drink. 
After enacting numerous laws by great effort and 
ceaseless agitation, from year to year, defining who 
should be granted license to sell; stipulating that 
they should not sell to minors, to habitual drunkards, 
to prisoners, to intoxicated persons; that liquors 
should not be sold near schools, churches, soldiers' 
homes, nor in rooms not on the ground floor, nor in 
drug stores except by a physician's prescription, nor on 
Sundays and election days, nor in a "blind tiger"; and 
after prohibiting saloon-keepers from allowing minors 
to loiter in the place, and making them liable for 
harm to the family of the one to whom they sold 
liquor; and requiring that the effects of alcoholic 
drinks be taught in the schools; and fining minors 
for misrepresenting their age to obtain liquor, and 
intoxicated persons for being found so in public; and 
after years under laws making it the duty of county 
commissioners, prosecuting attorneys, mayors, police 
commissioners, and the judiciary to enforce these 
laws, another statute was tried. Under the Moore 
amendment to the Nicholson Law, to which the 
Supreme Court has given its approval, the citizens are 



Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 497 

now moving. Under this law, if a majority of the 
voters in any township or ward of a city shall file a 
remonstrance three days before any regular meeting 
of the commissioners against granting a license to 
sell intoxicating liquors to any individual applicant, 
or all applicants, then it will be unlawful for the com- 
missioners to grant a permit for two years following. 
Power of attorney to sign a remonstrance may be 
delegated by a citizen to an agent or member of a 
committee who is on the watch for applicants for 
license. 

This new law makes it optional with wards and 
townships whether they will have saloons or not. It 
is intended to adopt the measure also for counties. 
Working under this statute, the statistics for 1906 
show that two-thirds of the townships of the State 
have now no saloons, and nearly three-fourths of the 
territory of Indiana is without a licensed saloon; and 
the Anti-Saloon League is pressing the campaign 
against the traffic ever3rwhere. The Indiana brewers, 
alarmed by the broad sweep that this campaign has 
made, decided not to start any more saloons in the 
State. They also gave it out that they would dis- 
continue the purchase of fixtures for their friends in 
the business, or advance funds for their support; 
and that the association would assist the authorities 
to enforce the present law, and help allay agitation 
by driving " dive-keepers " out of the business. Of 
this temperance movement, the Wine and Spirit 
Circular warns the liquor trade that "this league 
is a strongly centralized organization, officered by 
men of unusual ability, financed by capitalists, sub- 
scribed to by hundreds of thousands of men and 
women and children, advised by attorneys of great 



498 Historic Indiana 

ability, and it is working with definite ideas to guide 
it. The retail liquor trade must mend its ways ma- 
terially, or be prohibited, save from the business of 
tenderloin precincts of larger cities." It may be 
added that in August, 1908, Indiana added a statute 
known as the County Unit Law, which extends the 
present conditions under which license is granted, to 
whole counties, if the majority of voters so order by 
remonstrance. 

Indiana has passed laws prohibiting the sale of 
cocaine and opium without a physician's prescription, 
and after one sale is made the prescription must be 
cancelled. It has also passed a prohibition on ciga- 
rettes. The fines authorized for violation of gambling 
laws, if imposed, might leave little to make the breaking 
of those sweeping statutes worth tempting the further 
infraction of the law. The enactments of pure-food 
laws are sufficient, if enforced, to protect the health 
of the State inhabitants. There is a regulation exacting 
sanitation of all food-producing establishments, and 
the assurance of the purity and wholesomeness of 
the products therein, and of the health of the 
operatives. 

The laws in Indiana for the incorporation of cities 
have modernized the modes of city government, 
and the enactments for reform of county and town- 
ship administration, which provide for supervision and 
legislation by Boards of Control, separating legislative 
and executive functions, are intended to regulate 
local abuses and insure business methods in county 
affairs. The new laws tending to equalization of 
taxation have been found worthy of being copied 
by other States. The decision of the Supreme Court 
of Indiana that, according to its laws, if a man is 



Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 499 

guilty of bribery of a voter whose support he desires 
to enlist, he is ineligible to hold the office, even if he 
is elected without including the purchased vote, shows 
the desire to maintain the purity of the ballot. This 
decision holds true of votes in convention also. Indi- 
ana was one of the first States to adopt the Australian 
ballot, and also introduced improvements which were 
copied by other communities. The State's fee and 
salary law, whereby officials are paid a fixed salary 
and the fees pass into the treasury, was a great moral 
advance, as also were the franchise license laws of 
1 89 1, regulating the granting of commercial privileges. 
Besides the general codes for the benefit of wage- 
earners, common to many of the States, there are 
statutes in the interests of the laboring classes that 
show Indiana's regard for the welfare of her workers, 
and that their well-being is of the very greatest im- 
portance. A Labor Commission was created in 1899, 
one member of which must come from the employing 
class, and the other must represent the wage-earners. 
This ■ Commission is to serve as a mediator, look 
after the interests of laborers, endeavor to conciliate 
in times of trouble, and arbitrate opposing interests. 
Factory inspection has been instituted to look after 
the bodily welfare of workmen, including the sani- 
tation of buildings, protection of belts and machinery, 
fire-escapes in high buildings, safety appliances where 
needed, light and air, temporary floors in buildings 
which are in course of construction, and other measures 
of protection. Employers as well as employees are 
gratified with the results of these enactments. There 
are laws regulating the conditions of employment of 
women and children, including the prohibition of 
taking children under fourteen years of age, and 



500 Historic Indiana 

under sixteen, except during school vacation, of 
children who cannot read and write. Ten hours is 
the longest day for labor by women, and night 
labor by them in manufactories between the hours 
of ten and six is prohibited. There is a statute to 
insure weekly payment of wages, and forbidding the 
assignment of future wages. A law fixes the limit of 
hours for a day's work, and provides for the noon 
hour. The large coal-mining business is on the eight- 
hour basis and the laws relating to labor unions are 
very liberal. Enactments have been passed forbidding 
the discharge of persons because they were members 
of labor unions. There are provisions for the pro- 
tection of trainmen, miners, and engineers. There 
have been decisions from appellate and supreme 
courts, interpreting the laws affecting the liability 
of the employer for accidents, in a manner much 
more favorable to the employee than the interpretation 
of similar laws in sister States. Thoughtful citizens 
of Indiana look forward to state regulation of work- 
ing men's insurance and laws providing pensions for 
old age. In the words of Charles R. Henderson, a 
native of Indiana, who has worked for years collecting 
international data for these measures, "We are laying 
a demand upon the legislatures of the country to 
make laws conform, not to conditions which have 
been outgrown, but to conditions as we face them 
to-day. I speak with the emphasis of conviction, 
with the hope that we are seeing the dawn of the 
result of a long study of a great subject, and of a 
successful striving for a righteous end." 

As a result of the law^s for the protection of laborers, 
and the conciliatory methods of adjustment by a 
commission, the conditions in Indiana have become 











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Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 501 

more favorable to order. Annual contracts, and 
settlements of demands by arbitration, have reduced 
the number of strikes in the proportion of twenty to 
one. Especially is this the gratifying state of affairs 
in the case where the workers are skilled, and are 
members of a union. 

Indiana's saving banks are organized on a plan to 
insure the safety of the people's savings. These 
banks were planned to be philanthropic institutions, 
and were not intended to make money for the incor- 
porators, or for the directory. Their securities are 
on the basis of unimproved real estate values and 
farm property. Provisions for penny and dime sav- 
ings have also been made by the State. 

As mentioned in the chapter on Education, the 
State schools for the blind, deaf, the feeble-minded, 
and the soldiers' and sailors' orphans are regarded as 
part of the public school system. This is from the 
recognition of the fact that the infirmities of these 
children bar them from the regular schools established 
for all youth. These schools are also furnished with 
the appliances for industrial training. 

It is conceded that the provision for the disburse- 
ment of charities, and the care of the flotsam and 
jetsam of humanity, is also a distinct gauge of the 
advancement made by a commonwealth. In Indiana 
there are higher planes to be attained, but by 1889 
the State had advanced to the position of creating a 
Central Board of State Charities, to supervise the 
expenditure of the funds, and the whole system of 
public charities to which the State contributes. This 
board is intended to be purely advisory and represents 
the people in visitation, inspection, and reporting 
any recommendations considered desirable. It is 



502 Historic Indiana 

composed of representative citizens serving without 
pay, and required by law to have the oversight of 
every department of charities and correction, from 
the great State prisons and insane hospitals to the 
small town lock-up, and the thousand and more 
township trustees, the county jails, poor asylums, and 
every children's orphan asylum. All these institutions 
are under the inspection of this strong board. It had 
long been recognized that the county is too small a 
govermental unit, with too restricted resources, to grap- 
ple successfully with all of the problems of relief. It was 
felt that a central supervisory body was the only wise 
and economical way in which to influence the adminis- 
tration of the affairs of the commonwealth. It is now 
this State Board's duty to see that every inmate of 
every public institution receives proper care; that the 
public funds are honestly expended, although it does 
not direct the expenditure; and that the institutions 
are properly conducted. No more important office 
can be bestowed upon a citizen of the State than 
that of an appointment on the Board of State Charities. 
At present, the care of 86,000 persons is under the 
board's supervision, and an oversight of the expend- 
iture of over two million seven hundred thousand 
dollars. When a citizen recalls the haphazard methods 
of administering the charities and corrections under 
the former customs, and which are still practised in 
too many States, the wisdom of centralized control 
is most evident. Under the persistent recommen- 
dations of this board a steady improvement in the 
laws has been accomplished; and as a consequence, 
the conditions in the various institutions are so im- 
proved that it is extremely gratifying to the citizen 
who has a humane interest in the unfortunate. He 



Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 503 

can also feel assured that there is a continuous over- 
sight and frequent inspection, that was not possible 
before. This board has secured laws which insure 
non-partisan boards of trustees; four trustees are 
appointed by the governor to administer the affairs 
of each State institution, not more than two of whom 
may be of the same political affiliation. Each board 
appoints its own superintendent, and the superin- 
tendent in turn appoints all officers and employees 
under him. No other qualification than fitness must 
be taken into consideration in making appointments; 
and the trustees are prohibited from interfering in 
the selection or discharge of employees. The appoint- 
ment of separate trustees for each institution insures 
more direct personal responsibility and interest in 
the administration of that particular institution's 
affairs than if there was a general board for all of 
the State's wards. As the demands on the time of 
the trustees are less, they can be more faithful to the 
trust imposed in them by their acceptance of ap- 
pointment. Non-interference on the part of any of the 
trustees in the selection of employees makes the 
superintendent entirely responsible for the work done 
by his assistants. Since the new regime of admin- 
istering the State charities, under the watch-care of 
a strong advisory board, which has had the advantage 
of the valuable services as secretaries of such men 
of national fame as Ernest P. Bicknell, Alexander 
Johnson, and at present Amos W. Butler as field 
officer, the supervision has so greatly improved the 
business methods that the expenditures have been 
economized in many particulars. In the adminis- 
tration of townships' trustees' relief, an average 
saving of $300,000 a year has been accomplished. 



504 Historic Indiana 

In the State institutions, the annual expenditure 
would probably be $225,000 less than it was prior 
to 1895. At the same time the standards of the in- 
stitutions have been raised in every particular. More 
humane treatment of the State's wards has been 
assured, and better instruction given than could have 
been imparted in the isolated county asylums. All 
of this improvement in administration has secured for 
the plan of central supervision the confidence of 
the people, the support of the press, and an influ- 
ence with the legislative body for further betterment. 
Among the wise laws, and amendments to laws, 
that the board has secured, a few may be mentioned, 
to show the position attained by the State, in com- 
parison with other sections. The Board of Children's 
Guardians has been authorized for every county, 
and the terms neglected and dependent have been 
explicitly defined, so that there need be no doubt as 
to the rights of boards to act. It adds to uniform- 
ity of administration that, throughout the State, no 
child can be made a public dependent except by the 
judge of the Juvenile Court. Any citizen can, without 
personal expense, bring the case to the attention of the 
Juvenile Court. In cases where such children are 
brought before the Juvenile Court, the parents or those 
having the custody of the children, who wilfully neglect 
their duty to them, may be brought before the court and 
fined any sum not exceeding $500. But, in accordance 
with the new theories of dealing with the criminal 
classes, the court has the power to suspend the sen- 
tence, and release the person so found guilty, putting 
him or her on probation for two years, on condition 
that he or she shall appear before the court at such 
times as shall be designated, and show that he or 



Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 505 

she has provided and cared for the children. In 
such cases the children may be given to them, but 
if they, in any way, violate the parole they may be 
sentenced at any time. This gives the court the 
necessary hold on the parent or guardian, which is 
most effective in keeping them to their duties. Few 
parents will neglect their children, or contribute to 
their delinquency, if they are in danger of being sent 
to prison for a long term. At the end of two years, 
if there has been no violation of the court's order, 
the person is free from the sentence. The Legislature 
has also given the Board of Guardians a general power 
to take a child under their care where the associations 
of such a child are such as to contaminate and corrupt 
it. This gives the board the power to act when it 
may be unable to prove specific charges, although it 
is evident that the welfare of the child is at stake. 
Not only has Indiana provided for a special court 
for juvenile offenders, either by special judge in cities 
of 100,000 or more inhabitants, or in other counties, 
by the regular judge of the circuit court sitting, but it 
has increased his jurisdiction by empowering him to 
hear juvenile cases in vacation time. The powers 
of the court are almost concurrent with the juris- 
diction of the criminal court, for the judge is given 
power to punish any person that the evidence shows 
is guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a child, 
if such contributing act be a misdemeanor. If it is 
shown to be a felony, the juvenile court is given the 
power to bind him over to the criminal court. An 
act has been passed making it a felony, and sub- 
jecting the offender to a term of two to fourteen years 
imprisonment, to contribute to the delinquency of 
girls under eighteen years, by enticing them into 



5o6 Historic Indiana 

a wine-room, saloon, or other questionable place for 
immoral purposes. There has been State legislation 
authorizing county commissioners of adjoining coun- 
ties to unite in the erection of asylums for the care 
of dependent children, who have heretofore been 
kept in the county poor asylums. Better still is the 
provision made for the placing of such children in 
homes, and the continuous watch -care over them 
afterward. Prolonged institutional life is recognized 
as a great wrong to a child, and a "childless home 
for every homeless child" is the object of this method 
of caring for dependent children, as soon as it is pos- 
sible. All of the various State institutions especially 
designed for the care of defective children are equipped 
with modem appliances to insure their education, 
and industrial training; as in the State schools for 
the blind, the deaf, the feeble-minded, epileptics, the 
soldiers' orphans, and the boys and girls who are 
delinquents. 

Desertion of wife and children has been made a 
felony. The granting of marriage licenses has been 
more strictly regulated by the law passed in 1905. 
This law makes the county clerks liable to a pen- 
alty should they issue a marriage license without the 
observance of its provisions. Under this statute, the 
first of its kind probably, no license to marry shall 
be issued where either of the contracting parties 
is an imbecile, epileptic, of imsound mind, or under 
guardianship as a person of unsoimd mind; nor to 
any male person who is, or has been within five years, 
an inmate of any county asylum, or home for indigent 
persons, unless it satisfactorily appears that the cause 
of such condition has been removed and that such 
male applicant is able to support a family and likely 



Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 507 

to so continue. Nor shall any license be issued when 
either of the contracting parties is afflicted with a 
transmissible disease, or at the time of making ap- 
plication is under the influence of intoxicating liquor 
or narcotic drug. Uniform blanks to be filled out 
are required for the whole State alike ; and no license 
to marry shall be issued except upon written and 
verified application. This application, stating in full 
the previous history and condition of the applicants, 
becomes a matter of record, and open to public 
inspection. 

Under the supervision of the State board, the poor 
asylums have been improved in administration, and 
their complete renovation urgently pressed upon the 
various counties that are remiss in this particular. 
Before the new regime, they were as great a stigma 
on the good name of the State as are the county 
jails. Legislation relating to the county jails and 
asylums must be the next step in advance in the 
history of Indiana's progress. Indiana has a pro- 
vision for police matrons in the police stations of the 
cities of 10,000 population or over, and jail matrons 
in counties having 50,000 population or over. There 
is also a later law providing that condemned women, 
sentenced for ninety days, shall be sent to the State 
workhouse, where they are taught an industry, in- 
stead of lying in idleness in the county jail. These 
are all very gratifying advance measures. The State 
board also serves in an advisory capacity in the plan- 
ning of new county jails, and poor asylums, as to 
their arrangement and sanitary provisions. 

One of the most desired objects was obtained 
when the village of epileptics was authorized. With 
a number reaching four thousand in the present pop- 



5o8 Historic Indiana 

ulation, the wisdom of providing separate care for 
these afflicted ones, and a possibility of their having 
an opportunity to be self-supporting, was recognized 
by all workers for humanity. Twelve hundred and 
forty-five acres, near the town of Newcastle, was 
selected for the village; and the necessary buildings 
are to be erected as they are needed. This institution 
will, in time be partially self-supporting, as many of 
the inmates are capable people when not ill. Many 
of them will be able to help care for others who are 
stranded by this incurable affliction. The handicap 
of this disease will be less cruel when the conditions 
of living are accommodated to the inmate's misfortune. 

The feeble-minded children are no longer to be 
kept in the county poor asylums, but have provisions 
made for them in a State school at Fort Wayne. This 
home is situated on a farm of three hundred and 
ten acres. More buildings are needed for the accom- 
modation of other unfortunates that are suffering 
for the care given here ; but the institution is managed 
on the most humane lines, and the children are taught 
all that they are capable of learning. It is recognized 
that accommodations are imperative in State asylums 
for both feeble-minded children and adults, as well 
as for the incurable insane. 

By a law enacted in 1903, Indiana recognized the 
humanity of the State providing for its sick, and 
authorized the establishment of hospitals by county 
commissioners and their maintenance afterwards. 
They may do this in conjunction or without the 
aid of hospital associations. Indigent patients may 
be received into such hospitals from other counties, 
by a payment of the cost; and it is also provided 
that two or more counties may unite in building a 



Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 509 

hospital, for the use of those counties; making it 
possible, by either of these methods, for even the most 
backward communities to care for the sick and afBicted. 

Aware of the awful waste of life from that dread 
disease tuberculosis, Indiana has made provisions for 
a State hospital for the treatment of patients suffering 
from this affliction. The State has authorized a 
commission to secure a site of five hundred acres for 
the important work. There care and treatment will 
be instituted by the trustees, without the delay of 
waiting for great buildings. A law has been passed 
directing the proper authorities to supply free anti- 
toxin to citizens too poor to purchase it, at the expense 
of the Board of Health. 

Indiana has four hospitals for the insane, in dif- 
ferent districts of the State, and a fifth is under con- 
struction. There is also established a state soldiers' 
home, located at Lafayette, which is open not only 
to old soldiers and sailors, but also to their aged wives 
and widows. Here they may not have the hardship 
of separation added to poverty and old age. The 
orphans of soldiers and sailors are provided for in 
a home and school at Knightstown, on a farm of two 
hundred and forty-seven acres. 

Since the Board of State Charities has suggested 
needed legislation, the whole system of out-door 
relief of the poor has been rearranged, and the duties 
of officers defined. Now, the township trustees are 
the overseers of the poor to give the temporary relief; 
and when permanent aid is found necessary, the re- 
cipient becomes a charge of the county and is trans- 
ferred to the county poor asylum. This system of 
direct responsibility to the immediate constituency 
of the trustee, and the required reports, has effected 



Sio Historic Indiana 

an enormous saving to the taxpayers, amounting to 
hundreds of thousands of dollars; and also insures 
more careful investigation into the conditions of the 
family assisted. 

The progress made in the State's laws for the pre- 
vention and punishment of crime has been most 
marked. First, the laws for the care of children are 
being modelled with the object of preventing crime 
and pauperism, if possible, before the evil is done; 
this is shown in the provisions for universal education 
enforced by truant officers, the establishment of the 
Juvenile Court, industrial reform schools, and the 
children's guardian laws, whereby it is provided that 
there should be a board of children's guardians in every 
county in the State. 

In the laws for the punishment of criminals, Indiana 
has taken the position that it is correction, and not 
degradation nor vengeance, that the State wishes to 
accomplish by the punishment awarded. Says Alex- 
ander Johnson: "The fundamental principle of it all 
was adopted nearly a hundred years ago; for in the 
first constitution of the State is a magnificent dec- 
laration, never surpassed in a written constitution, on 
the subject. The eighteenth section of the bill of 
rights declares that 'the penal code should be founded 
on the principles of reformation and not of vindictive 
justice.'"^ Although it was many years before this 
prophetic statement, of some advanced thinker, came 
to be fully incorporated in the statutes, still the truth 
has been gradually formulated in the later laws. In 
this spirit the four correctional institutions of the 
State are certainly administered. The Indiana Boys' 

' Johnson, Alexander, in an address before the State Conference. 
April Bulleti]i, 1907. 



Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 511 

School at Plainfield is an industrial school to which 
are admitted boys over eight and under sixteen years 
of age who are guilty of vicious conduct. Such boys 
are committed until they attain the age of twenty- 
one years ; but through good conduct they may obtain 
release from the board of control by discharge, but 
are still under the watch-care of the institution. Should 
such a boy's presence in the school prove detrimental 
to its welfare, if committed for crime, he may be 
transferred to the Reformatory, with the consent of 
the governor, after he is sixteen years old. The State 
prison at Jefferson ville is the Indiana Reformatory 
and the State prison north, at Michigan City, is the 
real prison. "The Reformatory is governed," says 
Alexander Johnson, "by the best laws on the subject 
upon the statute books of any state of the Union." ^ 
All men between the ages of sixteen and thirty years 
who are found guilty of a felony, other than treason, 
or murder in the first degree, are committed to the 
custody of the board of managers of the Reformatory. 
Men- guilty of treason, or of murder in^ the first or 
second degree, and all men convicted of any felony 
who are over thirty years of age, are sentenced to 
the State prison. To both of these institutions men 
are committed under the indeterminate sentence and 
parole law. There is an allowance for transportation^ 
clothing, and necessary money, to all men who get 
out on parole. Another very advanced position was 
taken when the State added the law enabling circuit 
and criminal courts of Indiana to suspend a sentence 
which they had just imposed, and release upon pro- 
bation persons convicted of crime and misdemeanors, 

» Johnson, Alexander, in an address before the State Conference. 
April Bxdlctin, 1907. 



512 Historic Indiana 

in certain cases. While still keeping them under the 
surveillance and control of the prison authorities, 
the offender is subject to all of the laws applying to 
paroled prisoners ; also subject to the court, which may 
revoke the parole at its discretion, and order im- 
prisonment to begin. This vast change in penal law 
was undertaken to give guilty ones another opportunity 
to start right in life without the shadow of a prison 
record. There was also enacted a law ordering life 
imprisonment for all habitual criminals, upon a third 
conviction of crime in any State. This is to prevent 
degenerates from resuming their criminal careers 
upon release from every sentence, endangering the se- 
curity of life and property. To check the important 
part played by heredity, a law was passed making 
it the duty of all State institutions intrusted with 
the care of confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists, and 
imbeciles, to have such surgery performed, by experts, 
on these specified incurable inmates, as would prevent 
procreation. Insane criminals are to be transferred 
from the State prisons to hospitals for the insane. 

Indiana was the first State in the Union to establish 
a woman's prison. The State has also provided an 
institution called the Indiana Girls' School, which is 
located eight miles northwest of Indianapolis, and 
which is intended for the training of wayward girls. 
Its regulations are similar to the Plainfield school for 
boys, and it is constructed on the cottage plan. There 
are thirty girls in each cottage, which is a complete 
home in itself. Here they are taught life's tasks and 
given school lessons throughout their period of com- 
mitment. In maintaining this industrial correctional 
institution for girls, and a separate w^oman's prison, 
the State provides for the complete separation of 




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Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 513 

the sexes, and also divides the adult female criminals 
from the younger delinquents. Industrial training, 
and the rudiments of an education, are provided in 
both of these institutions; and the indeterminate 
sentence and parole laws apply also to these inmates, 
the same as in the prisons for males. The State work- 
house already spoken of has also been established 
for women who are sentenced for ninety days or less; 
they would otherwise have to serve out their sentence 
in the county jails, in idleness, and are here taught 
to be of some use. 

Trade schools are conducted in the State Reform- 
atory, intended to train men in useful trades, and to 
prpvide for the manufacture of products needed in 
the various State institutions. The State prison employs 
about half of its population on contract work, and 
the remainder are employed on the farm, or in the 
manufacture of binder twine, and on articles for the 
State. Under these arrangements, in all of the penal 
institutions, the inmates have the advantage of the 
saving grace of employment, at the same time lowering 
the cost to the State of their maintenance ; combining 
conditions more favorable than any other State. 
Superintendent Whittaker has said that no State in 
the Union has as satisfactory laws upon the question 
of prison labor as has the State of Indiana. These 
were prepared, and passed, with the approval and 
co-operation of the labor leaders of the State, and of 
those citizens directly interested in the management 
of the penal institutions. 

The results of carrying out the reform methods of 
punishment and the indeterminate sentence and pa- 
role system are of interest in making an estimate 
of the value of Indiana's humanitarian laws. Economy 



5^4 Historic Indiana 

of funds, stricter oversight, more careful assignment 
to the institution best suited to the individual case, 
scientific treatment, home instead of institutional life 
for normal children, and less pauperizing of the derelict 
members of the communities, are some of the results 
of the modern methods in charities and corrections. 
In the ten years that the new penal laws have been 
in force, we find, says the superintendent at JefTer- 
sonville, that boy prisoners from sixteen to thirty 
years of age are being educated and taught trades; 
that every influence is thrown around them to make 
them useful and respected citizens. It is not an un- 
common experience for the management to be re- 
quested by the boy himself, that he be not paroled, but 
be held in the institution until he has finished his 
education and trade. These boys when paroled are 
given tailor-made suits, costing less than did the 
misfits that were given them ten years ago. Positions 
at good wages are found for them before they are 
allowed to go out. While on parole, friendly advice 
and encouragement are given when needed. Under 
these conditions, both in the State prison and re- 
formatory, we find that sixty per cent, of the men 
and boys who leave the institutions become law- 
abiding and useful citizens. We find, further, that 
prisoners are now serving in the prison and reformatory, 
an average of two years and four months. Counting 
the year on parole, it amounts to an average of three 
years and four months that the State has control of 
the convicts; while under the old method of fixed 
sentences they were held but one year and nine 
months; which means that the management is not 
turning confirmed criminals loose upon society as 
rapidly as was done under the old law. An outline 



Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 515 

of the methods used with convicted prisoners, upon 
entrance, under the present laws, is useful in passing 
judgment on their desirability. After a boy is registered 
as an inmate, and his previous record and sentence 
have been duly recorded, a bath is administered and 
an entire suit of military clothes given him. He then 
undergoes a strict physical examination, and a school 
test. A complete history of himself and his family 
is taken. After instructions about the rules and 
regulations, and an invitation to the religious services, 
the boy goes to the general superintendent, who 
impresses him with the fact that each officer of the 
institution is there as his friend and adviser, and 
that they are there for the purpose of. making a man 
of him; and if they do not help him, it will be his 
fault and not the fault of the management. They tell 
him that his sentence does not mean one year, nor 
fourteen years ; but that he is sent to the institution 
exactly as a patient is sent to a hospital, with a case 
of typhoid fever; and that he will not be paroled, 
or discharged, until he is cured. He is informed that 
he is to be given an education to at least the seventh 
grade, and taught some trade, so that he will be an 
asset rather than a liability to the State when he is 
released. The boy is then placed in the school of 
letters, under a competent teacher, for two hours 
each day. Here he is given instructions on how to 
study, and how to prepare his lessons for the next 
day while in his cell in the evening, as he is provided 
with an electric light in his cell until time for retiring, 
at nine o'clock p.m. In addition to his school work, 
the boy is placed in one of the trade schools, usually 
the one that he prefers. The trade school, if it be 
printing, or any other, is under a competent instruc- 



5i6 Historic Indiana 

tor, who gives his time to teaching this boy, so that 
he may be a practical workman on leaving the institu- 
tion. There is employment for every inmate. During 
the first year he learns to read and write, and to be 
able to earn at least seven dollars a week. Then the 
board of managers hear his story, and the reports of 
his good behavior in the institution. They may grant 
him a parole, if they think best. Employment is 
found for each one, before he goes out into the world ; 
and a strict watch-care kept over him for the remain- 
der of the sentence. Not, said Professor Freudenthal 
at the international penological conference, "by a 
police oversight, but a well-wishing friendly interest 
which is maintained by parole officers. These serve 
either for pay, or for the honor of it, or they represent 
a combined system of both kinds of parole officers as 
in the model state for parole, Indiana." The paroled 
one reports regularly to the superintendent his earn- 
ings and expenses. If he proves recreant to the trust 
placed in him, he is returned to the prison; but if, 
at the expiration of his time, his conduct is approved 
he is discharged free. Superintendent Whittaker 
reports on the life within the walls, and speaking 
from the experience he has had in the last ten years 
in the work says: 

"I find there is nothing that will prevent crime more 
than education and instruction in some useful and practical 
occupation, and there is no better means of bringing about 
reformation with the class of our citizens such as we re- 
ceive at the Reformatory than instruction from a competent 
educator in a school of letters, followed up with practical 
instruction in some useful trade. We also find that any 
method adopted in such institution that humiliates the 
inmate in the eyes of the other prisoners or of the officers 



Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 517 

brings no good results from the standpoint of reformation; 
hence we have discontinued the use of stripes for clothing, 
abolished the lock-step, and instead we give each inmate 
in the institution a suit of cadet blue clothing, cut in 
military style, and permit them to march in twos in mil- 
itary order. Seventy-five per cent, of the iioo boys 
we have to-day come from broken homes and from en- 
vironments that were bad when they were children, or 
where the parents were dead. Much has been said of our 
divorce laws. The best law, in my judgment, that could 
be enacted for those who secure a divorce would be, if 
they had children under sixteen years of age, for the 
court to take charge of such children and see that they 
are placed in proper homes and given a high school edu- 
cation, the parents having nothing to say in the rearing 
of the child after divorce has been granted." ^ 

And what of these paroled men? Secretary Butler's 
reports show that more than half of them have re- 
mained faithful to the trust imposed in them. Of 
the 3755 prisoners paroled, since the law has been in 
force, he says that sixty per cent, have maintained 
themselves and been saved to society. Most of these 
men were not wage-earners before their incarceration, 
yet they have earned $949,773.63 while on parole, 
and eighty-six per cent, of their employers approved 
of the law as very beneficial. The paroled men, with- 
out exception, have a favorable opinion of it; and 
professional crooks, who do not expect to reform, 
all denounce the law. The secretary's deduction 
from all of his data is, that is it much better for the 
State as an organization that it be relieved of this 
expense; and for society that these men be returning 
to it professing reformation and willing to prove their 

1 Whittaker, William H., Address at Fifteenth State Conference 
of Charities and Corrections. 



5i8 Historic Indiana 

profession by becoming working, earning members of 
it, instead of coming out with the hopeless outlook 
of the discharged convict, under the old regime; since 
a much larger per cent, of those discharged under the 
old system return to lives of crime, and a far greater 
per cent, of those discharged on parole manage to keep 
out of prison. Under the new system, by far the 
larger number of those released after the parole test 
become law-abiding citizens, and but a small per cent, 
again find their way behind the prison walls. As 
stated by former State Auditor Hart, "to-day the 
reformatories are giving w^ayward boys and girls 
educational facilities, industrial training, and Christian 
counsel, so that, instead of being schools of crime, the 
worthy among the young offenders are coming back 
to society prepared for honorable responsibilities." 
For the older prisoners, the State Bar Association, in 
common with other citizens, had doubts of the wisdom 
of the reform statutes ; but its committee reported at 
the last annual meeting that the law was " a distinct 
advance in the State's attitude toward the treatment 
of criminals. The great majority of men paroled 
sustain the confidence placed in them, and not only 
perform the conditions, but merit their discharges, 
and become honorable citizens." 

In claiming an advanced position for legislation in 
Indiana, it is natural to ask what is left to be desired. 
Active citizens for the public good see many needs. 
Especially do they deplore and condemn the backward 
condition of county affairs in the buildings used for 
the jails and poor asylums, when it might be expected 
the citizens would demand better conditions in the 
local institutions, where the blame comes close to 
home. The tardiness of some of the counties in availing 



Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 519 

themselves of the empowering statutes, that 
are not mandatory, suggests the desirability of 
further State control. We hold no brief for Indiana 
where she is behind the civilization of the times. 
It is important that the counties should be more 
progressive. 

Indiana has not taken her place in the advanced 
ranks of legislation on the subject of suffrage for 
women. Notwithstanding most of the instruction and 
the civilizing influences of life in the State have been 
furthered by the mothers in the commonwealth, the 
ballot has not been extended to them. Among other 
things to be desired, in both county and State in- 
stitutions, is the doing away with the per capita 
method of providing maintenance and the retaining of 
convicted male prisoners to serve their sentence in 
idleness in the county jails, instead of in a State work- 
house. In the above conditions, it is hoped there 
will be speedy improvement. The most fundamental 
need is the establishment of industrial training as 
part- of compulsory education in all of the counties. 
If the combination of required education and in- 
dustrial training has proved so effective in correctional 
institutions for convicts, it would seem that a like 
provision for enforced, universal training for all of 
the youth of the State, as a preventive measure, would 
be better economy of men and money than as a cure 
after the evil had come upon the community. If 
hand work must accompany head work to hold the 
average pupil within the civilizing influences of reg- 
ular hours at school, and within moral environ- 
ments, it would seem the part of wisdom to furnish 
such facilities for the youth still innocent of crime, 
rather than that he should have to commit a felony 



520 Historic Indiana 

before he can obtain the training which will fit him for 
life work. 

It will be seen from this cursory study of a few 
subjects of legislation in Indiana, that each year has 
marked some advancement; and that enough en- 
lightened laws have been passed to insure a measure 
of support in the emergencies of existence, and humane 
treatment of the defectives and the delinquents, to 
serve as a guarantee of further progress. "Let us 
count ourselves, then, as not having attained, but 
as pressing forward," said Alexander Johnson in 
the State Conference of Charities. "Real and great 
progress has been made and the tendency is ever 
forward to sounder principles, to improved methods, 
to increased efficiency, to decreasing relative cost, to 
the saving of wasted money, to the saving of wasted 
humanity." It is also a significant indication of ad- 
vance that the president of the State Conference 
felt justified in claiming that "to-day there is no State 
freer from partisan control, from scandal in the manage- 
ment of its public funds, than is our own, no state 
where the unfortunates are so humanely and scien- 
tifically cared for as in Indiana." ^ This improvement 
has resulted from the united efforts of an enlightened 
contingent of workers for the public good, acting 
upon the conviction that self-help and not pauperism 
must be inculcated. Insisting that education and 
criminality are opposite forces in civilization, and 
that prevention and reformation are the duties 
of the State in reference to wrong-doers, to carry out 
present laws and advance to higher planes it is 
evident that the thing most needed is personal interest 

> Whittaker, W. H., Bulletin of Charities and Corrections, page 86. 
April, 1907. 



Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 521 

in the public welfare, and individual service on the 
part of the best citizenship. "The patriotism of 
public duty enters very largely into the vitality of 
civic righteousness." 

It will be seen that in her educational system, in 
the supervision of the health department, in ad- 
ministering charities and corrections, in the oversight 
of game and fisheries, in the appointment of city 
police commissioners, and in the methods of taxation, 
Indiana has steadily developed a closely centralized 
system of administration. It will be remarked that 
the State has taken the direction and control from 
the individual counties, and assumed the responsibility 
of enforcing uniform laws for the whole commonwealth. 
Formerly in other departments, as in the school system, 
"each community was a law unto itself. There was 
neither unity or uniformity. With closer organization 
order began to come out of chaos." This method 
has proved so efficient in accomplishing the wishes 
of the best citizens that it has attracted the attention 
of serious students from other States, as worthy of 
imitation. Indiana owes much to these general laws 
for all the counties. They have pushed forward civ- 
ilization in the outlying districts a full quarter of a 
century. Professor Rawles gives us a most excellent 
valuation of the results of this centralization in his 
very illuminating thesis on the subject : 

"Both theory and practice demonstrate that this gravi- 
tation towards centralization in administration is in 
harmony with our progress, our political ideas, our 
pecuniary interests, and our highest prosperity and hap- 
piness. This conclusion does not relegate the theory of 
local self-government to the limbo of obsolete doctrines. 
There will always remain a field within which the people 



$22 Historic Indiana 

of the respective communities will have free choice as to 
their policies. This conclusion does not, therefore, mean 
an abandonment of the ideals of the fathers. The evidence 
has been sufficient to demonstrate that this centralization 
has resulted in a more efficient administration, has secured 
a greater safety of funds, has protected more thoroughly 
the interests of the whole people, has ameliorated the 
condition of the unfortunate classes for whose care and 
education the State is responsible, has led to the reformatory 
in place of the vindictive principle, and has helped to 
elevate the social and moral tone by diffusing knowledge 
and culture through the agency of the common schools. 
An increase of population is of itself a sufficient cause 
for the extension of governmental functions and a more 
careful organization of the machinery of administration; 
for any form of government is devised and instituted to 
promote the welfare of the society within which it is 
established." ^ 

Judged by the accomplishment of increased good to 
all of the people, there can be no doubt that State 
control in Indiana has resulted in a more scientific, 
humane, and economical administration of affairs. 

Eminent statesmen try to impress upon the nation 
the importance of keeping the delicate balance of 
power between the States and the federal authority 
adjusted to prevent encroachments. Indiana has 
enacted such laws for the regulation of her local affairs 
and the establishment of a vigorous self-government 
that the State is often cited as an example of 
the direction in which the individual States should 
move to lessen the necessity of federal jurisdiction 
intervening. 

> Rawles, W. A., The Centralizing Tendency in the Administration 
of Indiana. Columbia University, New York. 



Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 523 

In making a summary of the legislation in Indiana 
to determine her rank in civilization among the States, 
we quote the statement of one of her citizens of national 
fame — "We have led in many ways, we are behind the 
most progressive in but few." 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Anonymous. Annals of Pioneer Settlers on the White-Water. 

Richmond, Indiana, 1875. 
Ball, Rev. T. H. Northwestern Indiana. 

Banta, D. D. History of Johnson County. Indianapolis, 1888. 
Bartel, Frederick J. " The Institutional Influence of the Ger- 
man Element of the Population of Richmond, Ind." Wayne 

Co. Hist. Soc. Pub. Richmond, Indianapolis, 1899. 
Beard, Reed. Battle of Tippecanoe. Chicago, 1880. 
Blatchley, W. S. Gleanings from Nature. Indianapolis, 1899. 
Blatchley, W. S. State Geological Reports. Indianapolis. 
Bolton, Nathaniel History of htdianapolis. Indianapolis. 
Boone, Richard G. Education in Indiana. Indianapolis. 
Burr, S. J. Life and Times of William Henry Harrison. New 

York, 1840. 
Benton, Elbert Jay. The Wabash Trade Route. Johns Hopkins 

Univ., 1904. 
Butler, Amos W. Reports of Indiana Board of State Charities. 
Butler, Amos W. Bulletins of Indiana Board of State Charities. 

State Department. Indianapolis. 
Cockrum, William M. A Pioneer History of Indiana. Oakland 

City, Ind., 1907. 
Coleman, Christopher B. Indiana Historical Magazine. 

Indianapolis. 
Condit, Rev. D. B. The History of Terre Haute. New York, 

1900. 
Conklin, Julia S. Young People's History of Indiana. Indiana, 

1899. 
CoTTMAN, George S. Indiana Historical Magazine. Indianapolis. 
Cox, Sanford C. Recollections of the Early Settlements of the 

Wabash Valley. La Fayette, Ind., i860 
Dillon, John B. History of Indiana. Indianapolis, 1857. 
Dillon, John B. Monographs on Indiana. Indianapolis. 
Dinwiddie Papers. Virginia Historical Society Publications. 
Dunn, Jacob P. History of Indiana. Boston, 1888. 

525 



5^6 Bibliography 

Dunn, Jacob P. Monographs on the History of Indiana in Ind. 
Hist. Soc. Publications. Indianapolis. 

Eggleston, Edward. Tales and Articles about Indiana. 

Eggleston, George Gary. The First of the Hoosiers. Ferno, 
1903. 

English, William H. Conquest of the Northwest. Indianapolis, 
1896. 

FiSKE, John. Essays, Scenes and Characters in American History. 
New York, 1902. 

Fiske, John. Old Virginia and Her Neighbors. Boston, 1897. 

FouLKE, William Dudley. Life of Oliver P. Morton. Indianapolis, 
1900. 

Harding, William F. "The State Bank of Indiana." Journal of 
Political Economy, U. C, 1895, Ghicago. 

Hendricks, Mrs. Thomas A. Popular History of Indiana. 
Indianapolis, 189 1. 

Henry, William E. Indiana Magazine of History. Indianapolis. 

Historical Addresses, Sketches in State Newspapers, and Remi- 
niscences of Pioneers. 

Hodge, Frederick W. Handbook of the American Indian. Wash- 
ington, D. G., 1907. 

Hollo WAY, William R. History of Indianapolis. Indianapolis. 

Indiana Historical Society Publications. 

Jones, Lloyd. Life of David Owen. London, 1873. 

Joutel, Monsieur. A Journal of the Last Voyage of La Salle, 
Reprint by the Gaxton Glub, Ghicago, 1896. 

Law, Judge. The Colonial History of Vincennes. Vincennes, 1858. 

Lemcke, J. A. Reminiscences of an Indianian. Indianapolis, 1905. 

Lockwood, George B. The New Harmony Movement. New 
York, 1905. 

Merrill, Gatherine. The Soldiers of Indiana in the War for the 
Union. Indianapolis, 1867. 

Merrill, Gatherine. Essays. Indianapolis, 1902. 

Nicholas, Anna. Idyls of the Wabash. Indianapolis. 

Nicholson, Meredith. Hoosiers. New York, 1900. 

Ogg, Frederick A. The Opening of the Mississippi. 

Parkman, Francis. La Salle and the Great West. Boston. 

Parkman, Francis. The Jesuits in North America. Boston. 

Parker, Benjamin. Annals of Pioneer Settlers in Ind. Mag. 
Hist. 1908. 

Parker, Benjamin, and E. Hiney. Poets and Poetry of Indiana. 

Pershing, M. M. Life of Gen. John Tipton. Tipton, Ind., 1906. 

Rawles, William A. The Centralizing Tendency in the Adminis- 
tration of Indiana. Golumbia University, N. Y. 



Bibliography 527 

Rawles, William A. The Governmettt of the People of the State of 

Indiana, 1897. 
Roosevelt, Theodore. Winning of the West. New York. 
Smith, William H. History of Indiana. Indianapolis, 1897, 
Smith, Oliver H. Early Trials. Cincinnati, 1858. 
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Reports. 
Stein, Evaleen. One Way to the Woods. Boston, 1897. 
Stein, Evaleen. Among the Trees Again. Indianapolis, 1902. 
Stickney, Ida Stearns. Pioneer Indianapolis. Indianapolis, 

1907. 
Sulgrove, Berry. History of Indianapolis. 
Thompson, Maurice. Stories of Indiana. New York. 
Thornton, W. W. The Government of the State of Indiana. 
Wallace, Lew. Autobiography. New York, 1906. 
Webster, Homer J. Wm. Henry Harrison' s Administrations of 

Ind. Territory. No. 3, Vol. 4, Ind. Hist. Soc. Indianapolis, 

1908. 
Winsor, Justin. Narrative and Critical History of America. 
Woolen, William W. Biographical and Historical Sketches. 

Indianapolis, 1883. 



INDEX 



Adams, J. Otis, 407 

Addams, Jane, 99 

Ade, George, 356, 391 

Agriculture in Indiana, 459, ch. 
XX.; French, 459; and early- 
settlers, 461 ; fairs, 462 ; at Pur- 
due University, 466; taught in 
schools, 469; women's part in, 
472 

Agriculture, Journals of, 468 

Alexander, Miss, author of Ju- 
dith, 388 

Algonquin Indians, 10 

Anderson, Melville B., 377 

Anglo-Saxon love of the soil, 103 

Art exhibition of great merit, 
407 

Artists of Indiana, 404 

Audubon, John J., story of mill, 
80 ■ 

Automobiles, 237 



B 



Baker, Martha S., 405 

Ball, Rev. T. H., 334, 382; on 
the culture in frontier homes, 
96 

Ball's paintings, 407 

Bandits of the border, 192, 193 

Banks, first, 160; in first con- 
stitution, 160; charter can- 
celled, 160; State bank of 
Indiana, 161; wildcat cur- 
rency, 162: disastrous free 
banking laws, 163; Bank of 
the State of Indiana, 164; 
national banks begun, 164; 
present wise laws, 164; sav- 
ings banks, 164 

Banta, Judge D. D., 410, 413 



Baptist Church first organized, 
168 

Barnes, Charles, 457 

B artel, Frederick, 382 

Bee-hunters, 87 

Ben Hur, 351 

Benton, Elbert J., brochure on 
the Wabash and Erie Canal, 
227, 228, 230 

Beveridge, Albert J., 386 

Bicknell, Ernest P., 503 

Billings, Dr. John S., 456 

Black Hawk War, 157 

Blake, Mrs. Katherine, on pio- 
neer life, 92 ; on Rappites, 

245 
Blatchley, Wm. 8., 328, 333, 

382, 474, 484 
Bloomington, State University, 

430 
Blue grass carried to Kentucky, 

125 

Breeders of pure bred live stock, 
a source of wealth and im- 
provement to the State, 476 

British incite Indians to massa- 
cre, 45, 58 

Bundy's pictures, 407 

Burr, Aaron, his deluded fol- 
lowers in Indiana, 134 



Cabins of pioneers, 64, 65 
Campbell, Alexander, 173 
Camp-meeting first held, 174 
Canada, part of Indiana included 
in, 18; French ceded it to 
Great Britain, 23; the West 
wished it incorporated in the 
United States, 137 
Cannibalism among the Miamis, 
13 



529 



530 



Index 



Capitals of Indiana, first, 147; 

second, 148; present, 151 
Carleton, Mrs., description of 

boarding-schools, 277 
Carrington, General, 456 
Catherwood, Mary H., 356 
Chappelsmith, John, and wife, 

259 
Churches, early, 166 
Civil War period, 293 
Civilization measured by the 

laws, 493 
Clark, General George Rogers, 

46, 51, 57 
Clay, John, quoted, 346 jf 
Clay deposits in Indiana, 484 
Clubs, 395; federation of, 397 
Coburn, General John, tribute 

to Mr. Dillon, 379 
Cockrum, Wm. M., 80, 81, 382 
Coe, Dr., pioneer physician, 155 
Coggeshall, Wm., Anthology, 

350 
Condit, Rev. Blackford, 203, 382 
Conklin, Julia S., 382 
Conner, J. D., Jr., Secretary of 

Registry Association, 476 
Conner's paintings, 407 
Constitutional Commission, in 

1815, 140; in 1850, 435 
Constitution, wise provisions of 

first, 140 
Corn Club, 467, 469 
Corydon, second capital, 137, 

148 
Coudert, Amelia Kusner, 405 
Coulter, Dr. John, 457 
Coulter, Dean Stanley, 457, 481 
Counterfeiting, 189 
Coureurs de bois, 8; pursuits, 8; 

character of, 9 
Covington, thriving river town, 

341 
Cox, Jacob, 405 
Cox, Sanford C., 382; story of 

Irish canal laborers, 196 
Crimes of the border, 182 
Culver Military School, 430 
Cumberland Road, 214, 215 



Dairy farming, 477 
Dale, Miss, married Robert 
Owen, 249 



D'Arusmont, Phiquepal, at New 

Harmony, 259 
Davis, Jefferson, unfair in re- 
port, 290 
De Frees, John, character of, 388 
Democracy of the West, 449 
Democratic party during the 

war, 300 
Denby, Charles, 457 
De Pauw University founded, 

428 
Dial, the, quoted, 449 
Dillon, John B., 137, 379 
Doctors of early times, 92, 93 
Dooryards about farm-houses, 

478 
Dress in 1816, 146 
Duncan, Robert, quoted, 119 
Dunn, Jacob P., 59, 130, 380, 

458 
Duquesne, Marquis, regarding 

French colonization, 459 



E 



Eads, John B., 456 
Earlham College founded, 426 
Earthquake in 1811, 133 
Economic waste, 489 
Education in Indiana, 409; in- 
dustrial, 441-443; compul- 
sory, 442 
Educational system, 446 
Eggleston, Edward, 358, 367 
Eggleston, George Cary, 457; 

quoted, 368, 454 
Electric power from streams, 491 
Ellsworth, Annie, sent first 

telegram, 286 
Ellsworth, Edward E., at Cen- 
tennial, 451 
Ellsworth, Henry L., quoted, 

460 
English, Wm. H., 59, 382 
Erie, Lake, crossed by La Salle, 4 
Europeans, contact with In- 
dians, 128 
Explorers in Indiana, 4, 5 



Factory Age lightens home 

labor, 99 
Factory inspection, 499 
Farmers, 475 



Index 



531 



Farmers' Institutes, 446, 467 

Federal and State authority, 522 

Fellows sisters, writings, 384 

Fertility of soil, 135 

Finley, John, poem Hoosier 
Nest, 65 

Fire companies in early times, 
286 

Fiske, John, 135 

Flatboats, 199, 202 

Fletcher, M., letter about the 
character of Indianapolis set- 
tlement, 156 

Fletcher papers, extract from, 99 

Ford, Simeon, 391 

Forkner's paintings, 407 

Forsythe's paintings, 407 

Fort Wayne, 18 

Foster, John W., 381, 457 

Foulke, Wm. Dudley, 142, 305, 
307. 380, 386 

Franklin College, 426, 427 

French dominion, 19, 20 

Furnham, Lucy, 389 



Game, wild, in Indiana, 63, 73 
Gazette on live-stock improve- 
ment, 476 
Genet, citizen, creates trouble 

in the West, 36 
Gibault, Father, priest in North- 
west Territory, 51 
Gillilans' tales, 391 
Girardin, Frank, paintings, 407 
Glisson, Admiral, 456 
Gold fever in '49, 290, 291 
Goodwin, Rev. Thomas, 213, 382 
Grange, 468 

Griffiths, John L., 380, 394 
Grist mills in early times, 70 
Gruelle, Justin, painter, 407 
Gruelle, R. B., painter, 407 



H 



Hamilton, Lieut. -Gov., instruct- 
ed by Great Britain, 45; re- 
captures Vincennes, 52; loses 
it forever, 57 

Hamilton's collection of Indiana 
writers, 352 

Hannegan, Edward, 288, 341 

Hanover College, 425 



Harding, W. F., monograph on 

Indiana, 382 
Harmonie Commune, 241 
Harrison, Benjamin, 394, 455 
Harrison, Wm. Henry, 125, 126, 

130, 282 
Hay, John, native of Indiana, 

456 
Hays, Prof., on high schools, 470 
Hayworth, Paul, and O. G. S^t^fyW 

366 
Helm, Captain, in charge of Post 

Vincennes, 51 
Henderson , Albert, a memoir, 336 
Henderson, Charles R., 381, 

457. 500 

Hendricks, Thomas A., 394, 455 

Herndon, Commander, 456 

Hibben, Helen, 406 

Hines, Fletcher, Secretary of 
Registry Association, 476 

Hiney, Enoch, collection of 
poems, 354 

Hinsdale, Prof., on British colo- 
nization, 30; on American 
occupation of the West, 59 

Hobbs, Barnabas, 411 

Hoosier, origin of name, 366 

Hoosier dialect, 358-362, 367 

Hoosier Group of painters, 404 

Hoosier writings, 390 

Horse-thieves, 185 

Hoshouer,Prof.,as a teacher, 424 

Hospitality of pioneers, 282 

Howard, Judge Timothy E., His- 
tory of St. Joseph County, 382 

Howe, Judge, quoted, 190 

I 

Illinois, separated from Indiana 
Territory in 1808, 130 

Indiana, first explored i, 15; 
under French rule, 15 ; British, 
26; territorial days, 106; fer- 
tility of soil, 135; State or- 
ganized, 139; future rank of 
State depends on legislators, 
165; in the forties and fifties, 
271 ; slavery in, 293 ; provision 
for education, 409; character 
of population, 448; geograph- 
ical position favorable, 478; 
natural resources varied, 479; 
character of laws, 493 



532 



Index 



Indiana Farmer quoted, 477 
Indiana prize corn, 469 
Indiana Society of Chicago, 457 
Indiana University founded, 43 1 
Indianapolis, site of, selected, 
151; capital moved to, 153; 
first sale of lots, 153; early 
settlements, 154-156; as a 
railway centre, 234; art 
^* ' school, 408 

Indians, all Algonquins in In- 
diana, 10; barbarity, 10, 127; 
customs, 11-12; religion, 12; 
influence of friars, 16; intox- 
ication, 16, 118, 119; send a 
"speaking bark," 60; conflict 
with white race, 106,127-129; 
forms of warfare, 107 ; General 
Clark's dealings with, 108, 109; 
articles bartered with, no; 
games, 119; treaties with, 120; 
names of, 120 
Industrial schools, 501 
Industrial training in the schools, 

519 
Internal improvement system, 
214, 219-221 ; effect on State, 
222, 225; abandoned by State, 

231 

Iron deposits, 489; iron oxide 
for paint, 489 



Jeflfersonville received General 
La Fayette, 153 

Jenners, Anna, story of a 
pioneer, 102 

Jennings, Jonathan, first Gov- 
ernor, 141 

Johnson, Alexander, 503, 510, 
511. 520 

Johnson, Robert Underwood, 
native of Indiana, 457 

Johnston, Gen. Jos. E., 456 

Joliet and Marquette discovered 
the Mississippi, 3 

Jones, Rev. Jenkin Lloyd, trib- 
ute to Thomas Lincoln, 104 

Jones, Lloyd, Life of Robert 
Owen, 248 

Joutel's Journal quoted regard- 
ing La Salle, 6 

Judah, Mrs. John, stories by, 
389 



Julian, Geo. W., agitator for 
abolition of slavery, 300; 
author, 382 



K 



Kankakee River, La Salle's ex- 
ploration of, 5 ; picturesque- 
ness, 333 

Kaskaskia, Fort, captured by 
Clark, 48 

Kentucky volunteers, with 
Clark, 46; guard the frontier, 
58; at the battle of Tippe- 
canoe, 124; carry home blue 
grass, 125 

Kindergarten Training School 
(State), 439 

Knights of the Golden Circle, 307 

Krout, Caroline, author, 389 



La Fayette, General de, visits 
Indiana in 1825, 153, 208 

La Fayette, city of, 204 

Lakes in Indiana number one 
thousand, t,t,j, 

Land Commissioners to adjust 
claims of settlers, 131 

Land sharks in the early settle- 
ment outwitted, 133 

Lane, Henry S., 274, 298 

Lanier, Sidney, quoted, 357 

La Salle, Robert Cavelier de, ar- 
rived in Canada, 3 ; learns 
Indian languages, 3 ; ambition 
to explore the West, 3; sells 
his estate to raise funds, 3 ; 
starts on his first voyage to 
find a passage to China and 
discovers the Great River, 3; 
makes another voyage west 
and down the Illinois to the 
Mississippi, 5; enemies in 
Canada, 6; goes to France to 
enlist the support of Louis, 
6; Tonty's friendship for,' 7 

Laws for the new States, 141 

Lawton, General, 456 

Lawyers in early times, 146; 
riding the circuit, 147 

Legislation in Indiana, regard- 
ing Australian ballot, 499; 
board of State Charities, 501, 



Index 



533 



Legislation in Indiana (Con.) 
502; bribery, 499; care of 
orphans, 504, 506; centraliz- 
ing tendency of, 521, 522; 
child labor, 499; compulsory 
education, 442, 495; county 
administration, 502 ; county 
hospitals, 508; county poor 
asylums, 507, 518; criminals, 
512; drugs, 498 ; elections, 499 ; 
epileptics' village, 507; factory 
inspection, 499; favorable to 
women, 494; family desertion, 
506; feeble-minded, 508; fee 
andsalary , 499 ; franchises, 499 ; 
incorporation of cities, 498; 
industrial reform schools, 511, 
512; insane, 509; insane crim- 
inals, 512 ; juvenile court, 504, 
505; labor regulations, 499; 
for libraries, 495; labor regu- 
lations for women and child- 
ren, 499; marriage license, 
506; out-door relief, 509; 
parole of prisoners, 514, 516, 
517; police matrons, 507; 
prevention of crime, 510; pure 
food, 498; reformatory, 511- 
514; results of reformatory 
laws, 513; savings banks, 501 ; 
soldiers' home, 509; soldiers 
and sailors' orphans, 509; State 
workhouse, 513 ; suspended 
sentence, 511; temperance, 
495-498; tuberculosis, 509; 
women's prison, 512 

Legislators sent to Assembly 
hold State's destiny in hands, 

Lemcke, Capt. J. A., his political 
canvass, 144; on steamboat- 
ing, 201 

Lesueur, Charles A., at New 
Harmony, 267 

Levering, Mortimer, Secretary 
of Registry Association, 476 

Liberty clubs, 400 

Libraries, Maclure's, 261, 262; 
travelling, 397; Carnegie, 398 

Library Commission, 397 

Lincoln, Abraham, lived in 
Indiana, 260; Emancipation 
Proclamation, 304; signed ag- 
ricultural college bill, 466 

Lincoln, Thomas, pioneer, 105 



Literary development in Indiana, 

^ .351-353 

Live-stock Registry Association, 
influence of, 476 

Log Convention, 144 

Log rolling, 75 

Logan, chief, speech, 116 

Looms in every house, 99 

Lotteries, common form of rais- 
ing funds in the early days, 
148 

Louisiana, held dominion over 
Southern Indiana, 18; was 
ceded to France, 34; to Spain, 
34; re-ceded to France, 34; 
Napoleon ceded it to U. S. 
in 1803, 41 

Lowell, James Russell, on gayer 
spirit of earlier times, 281; 
on the first American, 337; 
people of wide reading, 395 

Lutheran Concordia School, 
430 



M 



McCuUoch, Hugh, banker, 
Secretary of Treasury and 
author, 382; quoted, 163, 454 

McCutcheon, Ben, 391 

McCutcheon, George Barr, 387 

McCutcheon, John, great car- 
toonist, 392 

Maclure, William, geologist, 258; 
established schools at New 
Harmony, 2 5 9, 2 60; established 
libraries, 261 , 262 

Madison, 274; bank, 160 

Mails in early days, 83 

Major, Charles, novelist, 387 

Maple sugar, groves in Indi- 
anapolis, 154; Indians fond 
of, 481 

Marest, Father, wrote of the 
French posts, 409 

Marl beds in northern Indiana, 

485 
Marquette and Joliet discover 

the Mississippi 132 years after 

De Soto, 3 
Martin, Edward S., on the spirit 

of the West, 447 
Maumee River and portage, 4, 

18 
Merom College, 430 



534 



Index 



Merrill, Catherine, quoted on 
the Civil War, 296; sketch of 
her work in Indiana, 375; 
paragraphs from her essays, 
378 
Merrill, Samuel, Treasurer of 

Indiana in 1824, 153 
Methodist Church, early founded, 

168; schools established, 428 
Mexican War, 288 
Miami Indians in Indiana, 10, 13 
Milk sickness or "tires," 91 
Miller, Elizabeth, writer, 388 
Miller, Joaquin, the poet, born 

in Indiana, 456 
Millerism in 1843, 175-177 
Mills, Caleb, successful agitator 

for public schools, 433-436 
Mills, old, 330 
Mineral springs, 329 
Mississippi River, discovered, 3; 
contention over its free navi- 
gation, 34, 35; commerce on, 
40; contention settled in 1803, 
135; battle of New Orleans 
in 1814, 136; element of dis- 
sension in the Civil War, 323. 
Monetary craze in the fifties, 162 
Moody, William Vaughn, writer, 

384, 390 

Moore's Hill College, 428 

Morgan's raid during Civil War, 
308-323 

Morton, Oliver P., great War 
Governor, 296, 29-9 

Morton, Oliver T., writer, 395 

Mosler, Henry, artist, 407; na- 
tive of Indiana, 456 

Muir, John, tribute to Catherine 
Merrill, 377 

Muster day, great event in 
pioneer times, 88 



N 



Natural gas, the first use in 
Indiana, 487; large area of, 
487; added manufactures to 
State, 487; its waste, 489 

Natural resources of Indiana, 

479. 490 
Negroes, slaves in Indiana, 22, 
131, 139; Fifteenth Amend- 
ment passed, 165; free ones 
kidnapped, 295 



Nesbit, Wilbur, writer, 391, 
facetious reference to Indi- 
ana's literary fame, 355 

New Harmony, 240; location, 
241 ; first in many movements, 
255; principles in the Owen 
commune, 253; population 
attained, 254; variety of 
followers, 2 56 ; cause of failure, 
264; after the passing of the 
commune, 266; the village 
at present, 266 

New Orleans, founded, 34; the 
market place for the Missis- 
sippi and its tributaries, 40; 
ceded to U. S., 42 

Newspapers in Indiana, 398; 
Elihu Stout establishes first 
one, 398; their influence and 
character, 398-401 

Nicholas, Anna, author, 389; 
editor of Sunday Journal, 
400 

Nicholson, Meredith, writer, 385; 
quoted, 325, 358, 366, 372 

Nordyke's paintings, 407 

Normal Schools, State, 438; at 
Angola, 438; Danville, 438; 
Manchester, 430; Marion, 438; 
Rochester, 438; Terre Haute, 
438; Valparaiso, 438; control 
of certificates by Board of 
Education, 438 

North Manchester College, 430 

Northwest Territory, of which 
Indiana was a part, 44 ; Clark's 
conquest of, 44; value of, 58, 

59 
Notre Dame University, 429 



O 



Oakland City College, 430 
Ogg, Frederick, on favorable 

entrance of French into the 

continent, 15 
Ohio River, discovered by La 

Salle, 4; open door to Southern 

Indiana, 60 
Oil fields of Indiana, 483 
Ordinance of 1787, 130, 140, 

433 
Ouabache (Wabash) River, first 
navigated by white explorers, 
4 



Index 



535 



Ouiatanon, first post in Indiana, 
18; established in 1720, 18; 
location, 18; importance of, as 
trading station, 18; final dis- 
appearance of, in 1 791, 24 

Owen, David Dale, United States 
geologist, 267 

Owen, Jane, married Robert 
Fauntleroy, 267 

Owen, Robert Dale, State 
geologist, 268 

Owen, Robert, sketch of, 248, 
249; purchases New Harmony, 
247; establishes a commune, 
251; failure of community 
plan, 263; most valuable pio- 
neer, 264 

Owen, Robert Dale, work at 
New Harmony, 268; subse- 
quent career, 269, 270; In- 
diana's chief citizen, 26S; leg- 
islation secured by, 269; legis- 
lation for women, 269; Civil 
War record, 303 

Ox teams in use, 213 



Painters of Indiana, 402, 406 
Parker, Benjamin, author, 351; 
early pioneers, 351; collection 
of poets, 354 
Parkman, Francis, 4 
Peat beds in northern Indiana, 

490 
Pennington, Dennis, letter re- 
garding slavery, 139 
Pershing, M.M., historical 

sketches, 382 
Pestalozzian system of educa- 
tion introduced at New Har- 
mony, 255 
Petroleum in Indiana, 483 
Pigeon Roost massacre, 126 
Pioneering in the blood, 100, 107 
Pioneers, 60; their amuse- 
ments, 75-77, 79; agriculture, 
460; bee-hunters, 87; build- 
ings. 64; cobblers, 87; crude im- 
plements, 67, 68; culture, 96, 
449; dances, 78; defence, 107, 
108; dress, 69; field sports, 79; 
going to mill, 70; games, 79; 
help each other, 75; hopeful- 
ness, 97, 99; hospitality, 75, 



83; industry, 96, 98; journey 
to the West, 61 , 62 ; marriages, 
86, 90; modes of travel, 71, 
72, schools, 88; scarcity of 
letters, 83; sickness, 91; re- 
ligious meetings, 86; women's 
part in pioneer life, 69, 97, 98, 

Poetry by Hoosier writers, 353, 

„ 384, 385 

Poets and Poetry of Indiana col- 
lected by Benjamin Parker 

and E. Hiney, 355 
Poets, early, 352, 353 
Political parties of Indiana, 494 
Pontiac, Chief, warning, 106; 

war in 1764, 106 
Poor whites from the South, 

origin, 359; character, 362; 

dialect, 362, 363 
Portage at the head of the 

Wabash, 4, 18 
Posey, Governor, message to the 

Territorial Legislature, 137 
Posts established by the French 

in Indiana, 16, 17 
Pottawattomie Indians, 118 
Powers, Hiram, sculptor, born 

in Indiana, 456 
Prairies in northern Indiana, 94 ; 

prairie fires, 95 
Preachers of early times, 86, 87 
Prentice, George D., publisher 

of early Hoosier poems, 353 
Presbyterians, first church was 

organized in 1806, 168 
Priests of the French settle- 
ment, 16 
Prophet, the, received pension 

from the British, 1 2 1 ; at battle 

of Tippecanoe, 124 
Purdue University, 445, 446, 

466, 475 



Q 



Quakers in Indiana, 169; objec- 
tion to slavery, 284; connec- 
tion with the Underground 
Railway, 284; their schools, 
426 

R 

Races, conflict of, 128, 129 



536 



Index 



Railroads, first in the State, 221 ; 
later, 231; 233, centre at 
Indianapolis, 234 

Ralston, Alexander, laid out 
the city of Indianapolis, 
152 

Rapp, Frederick, assisted in the 
commune at Harmony, 241, 
244 

Rapp, George, with his followers, 
founds settlement at New 
Harmony, 241; returns to 
Pennsylvania, 245; death, 246 

Rawles, W. A., 382; on central- 
ization of State administra- 
tion, 521 

Reading circle of State teachers, 

438 
Reeves, Arthur Middleton, 395 
Reforestation urged, 481 
Registry Associations, secre- 
taries, 476 
Regulators, 188 
Republican party formed, 291, 

299 
Richards, William, marine paint- 
er, 407 
Richmond, Dr. Corydon, 102 
Richmond, Dr. John L., 102, 

340, 426 
Richmond, Rev. Nathaniel, 
writes of multiplicity of sects, 
172; one of the founders of 
Frankhn College, 426 
Richmond's Art League, 406 
Riley, James Whitcomb, 331, 
355. 384; quoted, 70, 77, 236, 
386; dialect, 367, 388; ap- 
preciated, 369, 370; reader of 
his own poems, 371; style, 
372; degree of M.A., 372; 
humor, 390; characteristics, 

391 
Rivet, Father, held first school 

in the territory of Indiana, 

409 
Rose Polytechnic Institute, 429, 

492 



Saddle-bags, 202 

Salt, scarcity of in pioneer times, 

74; expedition to evaporate, 

74; cost of, 184 



Sample, Henry T., on the Wea, 
flatboating to New Orleans, 
200 
Sand of lake shore, valuable for 

building material, 485 
School gardens, 444 

Schools, early, 88, 411, 412; 
for blind, deaf and dumb, 439 ; 
books used in, 416; circulating 
teachers, 410; consolidated 
schools, 439; county semi- 
naries, 422, 423; denomina- 
tional, 425, 426, 428; in- 
dustrial, 512; " loud " schools, 
412; public, 432-436; at New 
Harmony, 259, 422 

Scientific writers, 401 

Shale deposits, vast and valu- 
able, 484 

Slavery in Indiana, 22 ; negro, 
22, 130, 131; efforts in behalf 
of fugitives, 283, 284, 285 

Slocum, Frances, story of her 
being kidnapped by the In- 
dians, 1 10 

Smith, Oliver H., riding the cir- 
cuit, 147; writes of early 
preachers, 1 73 ;of horse thieves, 
186, 187, 188; recalls pioneer 
gentlemen, 453 

Smith, Roswell, founder of Cen- 
tury Magazine, 457 

Smith, Wm. H., history of In- 
diana, 382 

Snakes in early days, 79 

Snow, Alpheus, writes of colo- 
nial possessions, 355 

Social life before the war, 281 

Sons of Liberty, 307 

Southern settlers in the State, 
228, 293, 363; many of them 
came because of disapproval 
of slavery, 131 

Spanish money in Indiana, 32; 
dominion over the Mississippi, 
33; goods confiscated, 34, 36; 
efforts to divert West to dis- 
loyalty, 37 

Spinning in early times, 98 

Squatters, a peculiar class, loi 

Stage-coach days, 215, 216 

Stark, Otto, artist, 407 

State institutions of Indiana, 
502; benevolent, 507, 509; 
reformatory, 511, 513 



Index 



537 



Steamboats, first in Indiana wa- 
ters, 203; offence to Indians, 
204; importance to commerce, 
204, 207; passengers on, 207; 
route of commerce, 207 ; Mark 
Twain's description of, 209; 
cause of decline, 232; decline 
of traffic, 233 

Steel, manufacturing in north- 
western Indiana, 489 

Steele, T. C, artist, 407, 408 

Stein, Evaleen, quoted, 331, 
334, 335; stories, 355, 356 

Stephenson, Henry T., 387 

St. Mary's-of-the- Woods school, 
428 

Stone of Indiana unrivalled, 486; 
easily quarried, 486, many 
varieties, 486 

Stout, Elihu, established first 
newspaper in the State, 399; 
his fine character, 399 

Studevant, counterfeiter, 190 

Stump speaking, 143 

Sulgrove, Berry, journalist, 

383 
Sunday-schools, 178, 179, 180 
Superintendent of Public In- 
struction, 437 



Tarkington, N. Booth, writer, 

271, 387 

Tarkington, William, quoted, 
205 

Taverns of old times, 84; primi- 
tive accommodations in, 85; 
unique sign-boards, 85 

Taylor, Dr., poem, The Theng, 
362 

Taylor, Zachary, elected Presi- 
dent, 290 

Teachers, early, 414, 416; high 
standard the aim, 437; read- 
ing circle, 438; debt of State 
to, 446 

Teaming an occupation in early 
times, 156, 212 

Tecumseh, Shawnee chief, 117, 
122, 123; great leader, 121; 
opposed the advance of white 
race, 121; visits General Har- 
rison to protest, 121; de- 
parts for the South, 122; 



battle of Tippecanoe fought 
while he was gone, 124; died 
in the British service, 121 

Terre Haute, the French bound- 
ary line between Louisiana 
and Canada, 18; early fire 
protection, typical, 286; school 
centre, 429 

Text-books in pioneer times, 
416 

Thompson, Maurice, writer, 351, 
352, 374; quoted, 357 

Thompson, Col. Richard, Recol- 
lections of Sixteen Presidents, 
382 

Thompson, Will H., 375, 384 

Thornton, W. W., writer, 382 

Timber found in the State, 
480 

Tinder-box in every house, 72 

Tippecanoe, battle of, in 181 1, 
121, 124, 125 

Tippecanoe River, beauty, 326 

Tipton, General John, passages 
from his journal, 149 

Tomahawk right, 66 

Tonty, Henri de, appreciation 
of La Salle's explorations, 7 

Training for teachers, 438, 439 

Travelling in the olden times, 
208-215 

Twain, Mark, description of 
steamboat traffic, 209 

Tyler, ex-President, as a road- 
master, 473 



U 



Underground Railway, 284; ex- 
tent of the movement, 284, 
29s ; numbers of slaves helped 
to Canada, 284; work ceased, 
286 

Universities of Indiana, at 
Bloomington, 430; Purdue, 
at La Fayette, 445 



Valparaiso College, 430, 438 
Vevay scenery, 329 
Viele, Hermann, writer, 390 
Vigo, Co). Francis, acquaints 

Clark with condition at Vin- 

cennes, 53 



538 



Index 



?^ 



Vincennes post established, i8; 
French life there, 19; Fort, 19; 
captured by American forces, 
51 ; recaptured, 57; territorial 
capital, 147; university estab- 
lished, 148, 420; capital re- 
moved from, 148 

W 

Wabash College founded, 425 
Wabash River, explored by 
La Salle, 3 ; highway of com- 
merce, 204, 207 
Wallace, Gov. David, quoted, 

403 
Wallace, General Lew, author, 

373; quoted, 291, 424, 453 
Wallace, Susan, author, 374 
Water-power of the State un- 
developed, 491 
Waterways of Indiana, 237 
Wea Plains, 225 
Weaver, Col. Erasmus, 456 
Western characteristics, 452 
Whiskey used in early times, 74, 

91, 92 
Whitcomb, Gov. James, 460 
White River declared navigable, 

209 
Whitewater Valley and other 

settlements of Friends, 131 
Whittaker, Wm. H., quoted, 
513. 516, 520 



Wickersham's novel, 389 
Wild fruits in the State, 73 
Wild game found in Indiana, 63, 

73 
Wiley, Harvey W., 457 
Wilkinson's treachery, 37 
Willing, the, built for Col. Clark's 

expedition, 53 
Willson, Forsythe, poet, 384 
Wilstach, John A., translations, 

386 
Wilstach, Paul, author and play- 
wright, 386 
Wilstach, Walter, biography , 386 
Winona Institute, 430; address 

quoted, 478 
Winona Lake, 430 
Winsor, Newton, quoted, 59 
Winter, George, description of 

Frances Slocum, no; painted 

Miami Indians, 402 
Wishard, Dr., description of 

early practice of medicine, 

154 

Woman's suffrage, backward in 
the State, 519 

Woods-Ulman, Alice, stories, 
389; pictures, 406 

Woolen, Wm. W., historical 
sketches, 382; natural history 
articles, 382 

Wright, Frances, at New Har- 
mony, 396; organized the 
first woman's club, 396 



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